That Which Makes Us Human
by beyondsolo
Summary: In the aftermath of the Battle of the Citadel, the SSV North Cape is sent to investigate reports of geth activity. It's a mission like many others these days, chasing ghosts and false reports. But this time it's not going to be a stroll in the park. Mil-sci-fi in the Mass Effect Universe.
1. Chapter 1

**Introduction**

You can find a full roster of Akiban's platoon at the end of the Epilogue chapter. If you'd rather have a PDF version of the story, please get in touch with me.

**Content Warning**

_That Which Makes Us Human _contains descriptions of intense violence, blood, and gore. There is drug and sexual reference, and strong language. If you're old enough to play the _Mass Effect _games, you're old enough to read this. I base this on the rating issued by PEGI which is 18.

There are _Mass Effect _story spoilers and fact spoilers of the other games.

**Disclaimer**

The _Mass Effect_ games and books, their universe and their lore are the intellectual property of BioWare. I do not claim any ownership. This text is a fan fiction set in the _Mass Effect _universe and is in no way sponsored or licensed by BioWare/EA. I have no legal connection with said companies other than being their customer and user of their services (BSN, Origin).

The events and characters in _That Which Makes Us Human _are completely fictional. Any resemblance to real events or people is pure coincidence.

While I appreciate if you share this text, I must ask that you do not do so commercially (like selling it or making it available through paid services). There are plenty of ways to get in legal trouble; please find one that does not involve me or my work.

**Contact Information**

To get in touch with me, write an e-mail to beyondconsequence at gmail dot com, tweet at beyondsolo, or write a PM to beyondsolo on the BSN.

My thanks go to

CptDarkSeraph for editing and advice.

BioWare for making the _Mass Effect _games,

Drew Karpyshyn for writing the _Mass Effect _novels,

and the creators and controbutors of .com for creating an amazing wiki.

**That Which Makes Us Human**

**I**

The CIC of the _SSV North Cape_ lay in eerie twilight as the crew's fingers danced over the golden holographic controls. The Systems Alliance vessel had just decelerated from FTL transfer and was now approaching the Balance Point colony, a mid-sized settlement on the edge of Alliance space in the Attican Traverse, near the Skyllian Verge, about fifteen hundred lightyears counter-spinward from the Exodus Cluster on the coreward side of the Orion Arm. In the three weeks after the battle at the Citadel, the _Midway_-class frigate had been running on tight schedule, participating in the Fifth Fleet's mop-up operation, following up reports of geth activity and eliminating the synthetics wherever their presence could be confirmed.

"Welcome to the Parrin system," Lieutenant Solovyov announced from the pilot's station. "We'll reach Balance Point orbit in eight minutes."

Captain Everan Cooper nodded, squeezing the skin below his mouth between thumb and index finger of his left hand. "What are we looking at, XO?"

"Boards are green," Lieutenant Commander Marion Ktenge replied.

"So much for suspected geth activity," the captain muttered and dropped his arm to his side. "Let's check in with the colony and be on our way."

"Aye, sir," Ktenge confirmed.

The losses suffered in the war against the geth and mainly during its climax, the defense of the Citadel, had left the Alliance Navy hopelessly overstretched. Even now, many vessels were in dire need of repairs as the wreckage of hundreds of hulls still littered the space around the center of galactic civilization. The ships that were operational were busy with a wide range of tasks, crews working double and triple shifts. The 29th Strike Flotilla, the _North Cape_'s formation, was assigned to investigating reports of geth activity and dealing with it, or calling in reinforcements if necessary.

Most of the time the reports turned out to be outdated or just false alarms, useless either way, adding countless lightyears to the ship's operation counter without a single shot fired. It was tedious, but the crew agreed that it was better than the alternative: First the Fifth Fleet had engaged the geth armada to break the _Destiny Ascension _out of their crossfire, sustaining heavy losses, and many more ships had been destroyed by the geth's massive dreadnaught.

"Hail the colony," the captain ordered as the brown and green ball of Parrin IV grew larger on one of the screens of his station in the middle of the CIC.

"Aye, sir." Ktenge keyed the communication frequency. "Balance Point colony, this is the _SSV North Cape _on standard approach vector, please acknowledge."

Silence for over a minute. "Balance Point colony, this is the _SSV North Cape_, please acknowledge," the XO repeated.

"No response," she finally said and cut the channel. She turned away from her station. "I can't say if they're receiving or not. Their comm equipment could be damaged, or they're just ignoring our hails."

"Try the garrison fort, then," Cooper said. "There should be a whole battalion stationed down there."

"Yes, sir."

"Helm, move us into geostationary orbit above the colony and conduct a full sensor sweep. I want to know if there's something wrong down there."

"Aye," Solovyov confirmed and swung the 171-meter-long frigate into position.

"No response from the fort, either, sir," Ktenge reported.

"Sensors?"

"The colony and the fort check out fine." Solovyov was summarizing the data running down one of his holoscreens. "No structural damage or any other signs of combat. Amount of life signs corresponds roughly with what it says in our database."

"Roughly? What's the deviation?" Ktenge inquired.

"Two hundred and three too many. But the report only accounts for registered citizens," the helmsman replied.

"All right," Cooper said, raising a hand. "XO, link us up with Parrin's FTL comm buoy and send a report to Operations Command that we've arrived at Balance Point. There's no geth activity here, but the colony is not responding to our hails. We'll investigate and make sure everything's fine, then we'll be on our way."

"Aye."

"Helm, maintain geostationary orbit above the colony and keep your eyes on the boards. I'm not in the mood for surprises today."

"As ordered."

"And get Lieutenant Akiban up here."

Second Lieutenant Sarah Akiban was the commanding officer of the scout platoon of Marines assigned to the _North Cape_. With swift moves she swung herself up the ladder that was the shortest way between the cargo hold, where the Marines were standing by, and the CIC. In spite of the medium Aldrin Labs Onyx hardsuit with asymmetrical armor layout she barely made any sounds as she strode across the command deck, dodging busy crewmen, and came to a halt behind Captain Cooper's station.

She saluted. "Sir, Lieutenant Akiban."

"At ease, Lieutenant," Cooper said, acknowledging her presence with a nod.

She complied, finishing her salute, and assumed a stance of parade rest. The blue and gray stripes down the right arm of her armor were discolored in the blueish light of the CIC and the golden shine of the holoscreens. Her helmet was clipped to her equipment belt on the left side, a Hahne-Kedar Kessler pistol was holstered on her right thigh, a Lancer assault rifle was clipped to the right equipment slot on her back, and a Hahne-Kedar manufactured combat knife was sheathed hilt-down at her left shoulder guard. Further equipment included a water tank at the small of her back and two more packs attached to the belt, one containing the EVA gear and the other field rations.

"Sir, the FTL comm buoy is not responding to our connection attempts," Ktenge said, shaking her head. "I've run diagnostics on our systems and the problem's definitely not on our end. The buoy is active, though, no doubt about that."

"I see," the captain said. "Malfunctioning, then. Alternatives?"

"Three hours from here," Solovyov said.

"Not an option with the kind of schedule we're running on. We need the reset codes for the comm buoy."

"The colony administration should have them," Ktenge suggested. "But I'm getting the feeling that there's something wrong here."

"I feel you," Cooper muttered. "Any indication that our comms are being jammed?"

"Sensors aren't picking up any known countermeasures," Solovyov replied.

"Are you still here, Lieutenant Akiban?" Cooper asked.

"Yes, sir," she said, a mischievous smile spreading on her face. She hadn't moved since reporting in.

He nodded and finally turned to face her over the back of his seat. "We'll do a flyby of the colony and drop your platoon in the Makos. According to sensors, everything's fine down there. It's just the comm systems that appear to be out of business. Establish contact with the colony's administration and recover the reset codes for the FTL comm buoy; relay them to us as soon as you have them. While you're at it, find out why they haven't been responding to our hails."

"Aye, sir."

"Questions?"

"What happens if our comms buy it? Seems to be popular around here."

The captain nodded thoughtfully. "Fire a signal beacon. That will light up on our sensors, and we'll come pick you up. Keep in mind that your priority is the codes."

"Aye, sir."

"Anything else?"

"No, sir."

"Good. Get your Marines ready. You're dropping in fifteen. Dismissed."

"Aye, sir." She saluted, turned briskly on one foot, and was gone.

"Squad leaders on me!" Akiban barked as she marched into the cargo hold.

The gunnery chiefs of the four squads and the platoon non-com, Operations Chief Daisuke Nakata, came running her way and stopped two meters away from her in a semicircle. Behind them stood four black M35 Makos in two rows, between the vehicles the Marines of the 2nd Scout Platoon, 1st Reconnaissance Company, 24th Reconnaissance Battalion, 10th Infantry Regiment, 7th Frontier Division.

She took a brief moment to inspect the armors and equipment of her subalterns. All of the non-coms carried the same gear as her, except for Nakata, who also served as the platoon's engineer, whose armor amplified his Bluewire omni-tool and whose main weapon was a Hahne-Kedar Storm shotgun. He was also the only one who had a D5 rating—the others were all rated C4 or C5.

"Here's the deal," Akiban announced. "Local comms appear to be out. Sensors don't show anything wrong, but we have failed to establish contact with the colony. In addition to that, the local FTL comm buoy is unresponsive. The captain wants us to go down there and pick up the reset codes for the buoy. And we're also supposed to find out why the colony hasn't been responding on the way. Once we're done, we'll signal for pick-up and get out of there.

"Temporary comm outages aren't unusual, but normally you can tell what's wrong. Here, however, it looks like we don't know shit as all the systems appear to be online; they're just not responding. That's why we're going for a stride.

"There is no indication of enemy activity, but we don't do half-assed jobs. Full gear and ammo for all squads. Make sure everybody's got their water tanks and medi-gel units full, same for the buckets.

"Any questions?"

"Full mechanized drop for a bunch of codes? What aren't you telling us, LT?" Gunnery Chief Markus Huber, 1st Squad Leader, asked. His hair was cropped to uniform one millimeter length like that of everybody else in the platoon; Akiban ran a tight outfit.

She smiled grimly. "I told you what I know. Don't crap your skirt because the colony didn't call. It's not like we're dropping into a hot zone. It's a quiet, fluffy backwater colony down there."

"Let's just get this fetch quest over with and we'll be back on board for dinner," Nakata said in a chiding tone.

"My thought exactly." Akiban checked the watch that was worked into the left bracer of her armor and synced with the _North Cape_'s shipboard time. "We're deploying in twelve minutes. I expect all squads go in ten. Dismissed."

The squad leaders saluted and ran off to brief and prepare their squads while Nakata remained at Akiban's side.

"This is gonna be boring, isn't it?" the operations chief asked in a low voice.

"Yeah," she confirmed, and they started walking toward their Makos. The platoon leader would ride in the Mako with the registration 401, or just One, with 1st Squad, and the platoon non-com in 402, Two, with 2nd Squad. "Captain Cooper probably wants us to get off his ship and stretch our legs before this Charlie Foxtrot of a platoon tears the place apart."

Nakata smiled. "Stroll on the playground."

After slapping him on the shoulder and sending him on his way, she joined 1st Squad at the Mako in the back left. Three and Four would be dropping first. She acknowledged the salutes of the squad's Marines who were prepping their vehicle and equipment for deployment. In addition to ammunition for their primary and secondary weapons, the Makos also carried additional equipment for field maintenance and supplies like water, field rations, medi-gel, and omni-gel.

Akiban finished a brief inspection of the Mako's exterior and joined the Marines at the vehicle's lowered rear boarding ramp. 1st Squad was one of the platoon's two assault squads. It consisted of Fire Teams Alpha and Bravo and was commanded by Huber and his two fire team leaders, Corporals Daniela Miller and Mike Arden. Each of the assault squads consisted of an advanced marksman equipped with a Hahne-Kedar Avenger sniper rifle, a heavy weapons operator sporting an M-72 semi-automatic grenade launcher, and four riflemen, out of whom two had advanced medical training—nine Marines total, all wearing medium Onyx armor except for the heavy weapons operator, who wore the heavy variant.

As the platoon leader, Akiban had already given her instructions and expected her non-coms to take care of the rest. Therefore, she didn't interfere with their work—this wasn't basic training—and checked the interior of the Mako instead. The driver, who also operated the weapons, was one of the riflemen who weren't medics. The Marines would sit in two rows facing each other, platoon leader and squad leader in the first two seats next to the rear boarding ramp, then the fire team leaders, then the special weapons operators, and finally the riflemen right behind the driver's station. It was cramped inside with nine fully equipped Marines in the infantry compartment, in spite of the spare seat—one in the platoon leader's tank, two in the others.

Akiban grabbed two grenades from an ammunition box and put them in a pouch on her belt. She was certain that she wouldn't need them, but she had ordered full gear, and that included her, too. She didn't believe in officer privileges. Never ordering her Marines to do anything she wouldn't do herself, Akiban adhered to the same rules she imposed upon her platoon.

Turning away from One, Akiban checked on the progress of the other squads. Like 1st Squad, 2nd Squad (Fire Teams Charlie and Delta) under Gunnery Chief Luc Morand was already finishing its preparations. It was the platoon's second assault squad and accompanied by Nakata. The 3rd, Gunnery Chief John Hamann's heavy weapons team (Fire Teams Echo and Foxtrot), was also nearly ready, and its Marines were already mounting their Mako: Next to the squad leader and his fire team leaders, there were four heavy weapons operators in heavy Onyx armor—all four of them carrying grenade launchers for this mission—one medic riflemen, and one driver. Finally, the Marines of Gunnery Chief Ledia Rodriguez's 4th, the long range effect squadron of three lightly armored pairs of advanced marksmen and a pair of medic and driver riflemen, were making final adjustments to their gear.

Firing up her Bluewire omni-tool, Akiban ran diagnostics on her platoon's comm systems and nodded contently when all the branches of the communications tree showed up green on the display. She looked at her watch. 2143 shipboard time. After sealing her helmet with the collar of her armor, she attached the life support and power line in the back.

"All squads, mount on vehicles," she commed over her platoon's frequency.

The four icons on her HUD projected on the visor of her helmet, which represented the squads of the platoons, changed to checks—orders confirmed. Akiban waited for the last Marines to enter the Mako, then she walked up the boarding ramp herself and took the nearest seat on the left. The tank's seats were attached to rails on the sidewalls of the vehicle to dampen impacts that affected the hull directly—and bypassed the suspension—in order to minimize shocks the embarked Marines would suffer. Huber hit the controls to raise the ramp, and the illumination of the _North Cape_'s cargo hold disappeared as a thinning frame of light, giving way to the glum dark of the infantry compartment.

"All vehicles, One actual. Check in and confirm go," Akiban commed after she had strapped in.

"One is go."

"Two is go."

"Three go."

"Four go."

The lieutenant nodded. She switched channels to the frigate's intercom.


	2. Chapter 2

**II**

The Marines neither saw nor heard the ventral ramp of the _North Cape _open, but they felt their Makos launch forward and enter free fall; a hard kick followed seconds later as the thrusters abruptly slowed their descent. A second kick and the Marines getting pressed toward the fronts of the Makos indicated that they had hit dirt.

Akiban connected her omni-tool with the Mako's systems and activated a live-feed of the gun camera. She swapped through the gun cameras of the other Makos of the platoon to get an idea of their immediate surroundings. Clouds of dust from the landing and the _North Cape_'s flyby obscured the view, but the sensors saw through it and enhanced the images, showing the barren plain beyond. It was an accurate summary of the colony's arid latitude, except for its immediate surroundings which had been adapted for agriculture. The Marines had landed just outside the perimeter of largely automated farms that had been a major source of sustenance in the colony's first years and were being maintained since then.

"All vehicles, column formation. Two, you take point. Then One, Three, and Four. Find us a road between those farms and take it slow," Akiban ordered.

The squad leaders acknowledged the orders, and after the Makos had lined up with forty meters of clearance between the vehicles, they moved out at barely fifty kilometers per hour.

Except for the hum of the engines and the drivers occasionally exchanging information on their comm channel, it was quiet in the Mako of 1st Squad—disadvantage of being in the platoon leader's tank. Akiban used the silence to check comms with the _North Cape_.

"_North Cape_, this is Land Rider One actual."

"_North Cape_, copy. We read you, Land Rider One." Akiban recognized Ktenge's voice. "There's some static on your comms, Land Rider, but we read you."

"Acknowledged, _North Cape_," Akiban said. "We've deployed and are now moving toward the colony."

"Copy that, Land Rider One. We've got you on our sensors. Boards are still clear. Keep us updated."

"Acknowledged, _North Cape_. Land Rider One out." Akiban cut the channel and looked at Huber. "At least we've still got comms with our ride. Everything calm."

The gunnery chief nodded. "Good to know."

Akiban turned her attention back to her omni-tool and switched to Two's gun camera. The driver, Private First Class Linda O'Reilly, was just sweeping the camera across the area ahead. Balance Point was a typical colony in its expansion phase: The core of the city was visible from the distance and consisted of large structures that had been built on or had replaced their modular foundations of the colony ships that had originally settled the world. Smaller one and two-story buildings formed the outskirts of the city and mostly served as habitats for second-wave colonists. The more flat than steep slopes of a mountain rose behind the cityscape. Rocks only protruded near the summit of the geological formation that ran deep into the ground and was the core of Balance Point's mining operations.

As the camera swept left again, Akiban could see walls and the guard towers of the garrison fort. It was due west of the base with a large airfield between it and the city.

It was late afternoon local, 2212 _North Cape _shipboard time, when the convoy of Makos entered the city. The drivers had centered the gun towers of the Makos—so not to appear to be aiming at something or someone—and were now using the auxiliary cameras to look around. There were people in the streets; some of them looked curiously at the Makos driving past, others ignored them. Other than that it was very quiet.

"Notice something?" Huber asked. He was also watching the cameras on his omni-tool.

"No vehicle or air traffic." Akiban had noticed it immediately. "Unusual for a colony of this size. There's what? Over thirty thousand people here?"

"Odd," Huber agreed.

"Colonial Administration coming up on the right," O'Reilly announced when they reached a part of the city that looked like its original core.

"All vehicles, we're stopping in front of the admin building. You can stretch your legs if you want, but stay near the buckets," Akiban ordered.

The Makos came to a halt near a large beige structure. In spite of the modifications and annexes it had received, it still bore the unmistakable marks of a repurposed colony ship with modular attachments—even the flight of concrete stairs that led up to the entrance, that once must have been the first floor, did not hide that.

Akiban hit the controls and the boarding ramp lowered. "Be right back," she said as she unstrapped herself from her seat. "Alvarez, Vinne, you're with me."

The lieutenant got to her feet and walked down the ramp. Immediately a gust of cold wind carrying fine dust struck her. She ignored it and moved on, stretching her back as soon as she could stand upright, and hopped off the ramp onto the street. The two riflemen she had picked to escort her followed suit.

"Let's go," she said, ignoring the colonists who had stopped to look at the Marines.

They walked up the stairs and entered the administration building. The rushing wind was the only sound to be heard other than the calm chatter of the Marines disembarking from the Makos. Akiban activated the controls next to the entrance and the door—formerly an internal access hatch of a colony ship—slid open noiselessly. The three Marines entered a small room with no windows, one door on each sidewall and two on the back wall. The walls had been added later to split the originally larger segment of the ship into smaller compartments. Everything was kept in the uniform naval gray-blue, even the reception desk where a lone woman sat, mid-thirties from her looks, apathetically staring at a golden holoscreen. She looked up tentatively as the trio approached.

"Good afternoon, ma'am," Akiban said, stopping at the desk. "I'm Lieutenant Akiban, Seventh Frontier Division, Tenth Infantry."

"What can I do for you, Lieutenant?" the woman said, the content of the words more polite than the tone in which it was uttered.

Akiban thought that it was the first normal thing she had seen since entering this system: a bored and annoyed bureaucrat. "Ma'am, I'm here with orders to acquire the reset codes for the Parrin FTL comm buoy."

The woman took a moment to study the lieutenant from head to as far down as the desk permitted her to see, then she reached behind her neck and started playing with her dark hair that was loosely tied to a ponytail. "I see."

Akiban felt her insides knot up but didn't allow her mien to betray anything. "Can you please give us these codes or send us to someone who can?"

"Well, I can't just give them to anyone who strides in here, now, can I?" the woman mumbled and returned her attention to her screen.

Akiban pursed her lips. "Ma'am, if you could please direct us to someone who is authorized to give us the codes..."

The woman raised a hand, obviously annoyed. "I've relayed your request. I guess someone from admin staff will be with you shortly." Akiban could see the woman's lips form the words "military types."

"Thank you, ma'am."

"You're welcome." She wasn't.

"By the way," Akiban said, earning a what-now glance from the woman. "Do you have somebody monitoring comm traffic?"

"Of course," the woman replied as if Akiban had just asked the dumbest question ever conceived.

"I see." The lieutenant thought she was doing an admirable job at keeping the sarcasm out of her voice. "Why haven't you responded to the _North Cape_'s communication attempts?"

The woman sighed. "The bastard must have fallen asleep again."

"Wouldn't your VI notify you?" Akiban insisted.

"Yeah, normally, if the Alliance hadn't given us some piece of junk that kept causing malfunctions in the colony equipment. We had to restrict Balance's system access a few days ago—including communications." She was looking at her screen again.

"But you do realize that the local FTL comm buoy is unresponsive?"

Now the woman looked up, the grimace on her face containing a repressed litany of insults. "You do realize that I'm just the receptionist here, don't you?" she hissed, mimicking the lieutenant's tone.

"Of course. I apologize." With that Akiban turned away from the desk and led Alvarez and Vinne out of earshot, back in the direction of the entrance. "So, what do you think?"

Private First Class Marina Alvarez, short and olive-skinned, scratched the back of her head. "Don't know, ma'am. Friendly like a hungry varren, but it'd weird me out more if she was nice."

"Mhm," Private First Class Richard Vinne made. "What I thought. Can't wait to be off this rock."

Akiban nodded, scratching her chin.

"Lieutenant, this is Nakata." He was contacting her on the platoon's command channel which only the two of them shared.

"Go ahead, Nakata," she said in a low voice.

"LT, you know I'm not one to cry wolf, but there is a shitload of people standing there and watching us."

Akiban sighed. "Specify 'shitload.'"

"More than a hundred."

Weird, Akiban thought. Colonists with a garrison fort next-door shouldn't be this curious about military vehicles. And they probably weren't just waiting to get inside the administration building. "Right, just keep them away from the buckets. I don't want anybody to get run over, or get their fingers squeezed in a ramp, or whatever. You know how that looks on the extranet."

"Wilco, LT. Nakata out."

The door on the left behind the desk opened, and a small, slightly overweight man in a suit entered the reception room. He didn't bother walking more than one step inside, a busy expression on his heavyset face, and waved toward the Marines. "You're here for the codes?" he called.

"Yes, we are," Akiban replied, not calling but speaking loud enough for him to understand her.

"Please follow me!" the man shouted.

With a motion of her head Akiban beckoned the riflemen to follow and set out across the room. She thought about saying her thanks to the woman at the desk for a moment but decided against it when she saw her facial expression.

"I'm Gorsin Araden," the man said, eagerly reaching for and shaking Akiban's hand and those of the other two Marines. "I'm responsible for the tech staff around here."

"Lieutenant Akiban. I'm with the Marines who came with the _SSV North Cape_."

"Interesting," Araden muttered as he led them down a long corridor.

"Mister Araden," Akiban said, "you know why we're here?"

"Yes, the codes, of course," Araden mumbled, scurrying ahead on legs that were too short to maintain both the pace he was setting and any appearance of dignity at the same time.

"Mister Araden, do you know why the _North Cape_'s communication attempts went unanswered when she hailed the colony?" Akiban inquired.

"Yeah, well, comms have been a bit sketchy down here since we had to isolate our VI."

"I see. What about the garrison fort?"

"Uh, I don't know. You didn't reach them?"

"No, we didn't."

They reached the end of the corridor and Araden led them through the door that connected the corridor with another room. There were tables inside, arranged in a circle, with two inactive holoscreens on each, and the walls were covered by shelves that held data carriers. It looked as if there was no other exit out of the room than the door they had just passed; even the floor was covered with a rough gray carpet.

Araden immediately proceeded to turn on one of the holoscreens and, after operating a few controls, he swore. "I'm sorry, the codes are in the system, but they're encrypted and password protected. With the VI offline, I can't authenticate without the dynamic password. I'll go fetch the key right away." He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the room. The door shut close behind him.

Akiban closed her eyes. She felt a slight, dull headache creep up from the base of her skull. When she opened her eyes again, she checked her omni-tool for the local atmospheric pressure; it was just below one bar. For somebody with her training, it certainly wasn't enough to cause unease. She yawned and shook her head.

"I don't think he's coming back," Alvarez muttered after they had waited for almost twenty minutes, her hand resting on her holstered Kessler pistol.

"All right," Akiban said, agreeing with Alvarez. "Vinne. Door."

Vinne nodded and moved over to the door, facing it without standing in front of it.

After sitting down at the holoscreen Araden had left active, Akiban took a moment to identify the type and version of the operating interface. A few seconds later, she reached the access point for the reset codes that required the entry of the password. Her omni-tool could have broken a static password barrier, but there was no point even trying with a dynamic one.

"Nakata, Akiban."

"Go ahead, LT."

"Your engineering expertise is required, Nakata. Go inside, left door back wall, through the door at the end of the corridor, that's where we are. Take someone with you."

"Wilco, LT."

"Akiban out."

Not even a minute had passed when Nakata and Private First Class Thomas Varen, a rifleman of 2nd Squad, came through the door.

"Breaking into the colony's systems? The captain will flay us alive if this turns out to be unjustified," Nakata commented as he sat down at the holoscreen.

Akiban scowled. "They're just yanking us around here. My patience is at an end. Do your job, Nakata."

"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed, admonished, activating his omni-tool and starting to bypass the system.

"How's it looking outside?" Alvarez asked.

"The crowd's doubled," Varen replied. "Gawking like they've never seen Marines before. Men, women, children, all just staring."

They were interrupted by Vinne moaning and massaging the back of his head.

"Headache?" Akiban asked.

"Yes, ma'am. Don't worry, nothing I can't handle."

"Me, too," she said.

"Airborne agent?" Alvarez wondered. "'Cause my head is throbbing, too."

Akiban checked her omni-tool. "Not picking up anything. Maybe it's something in the air here. It's not incapacitating, so walk it off."

"OoRah!" the Marines made, not with much enthusiasm, but mostly because they didn't want to disturb Nakata who was working at the holoscreen.

"Got the codes," he announced a few minutes later.

Akiban nodded. "_North Cape_, this is Lieutenant Akiban."

No response.

"_North Cape_, this is Lieutenant Akiban. Come in."

Silence.

"Comms are dead," she said. "Let's get out of here and signal for pick-up."

"Lieutenant, this Huber." The squad leader's voice sounded agitated.

"Go ahead, Huber," Akiban said as she was moving toward the door.

"The people have gone crazy! They're pushing against the Makos!"

Akiban didn't understand what exactly was going on, but she would see it in a minute. They were on their way out. "Just hold them off and prepare for departure. We've got the codes and are on the way!"

"Aye, Lieutenant!"

The five Marines rushed through the corridor, helmets back on their heads, and entered the entrance room where they came to an abrupt halt. The desk was no longer occupied, but Araden and the woman from the reception were standing next to each other, blocking the Marines' way out. They both held pistols in their hands.

That was reason enough for Akiban to fire up the kinetic shields of her armor. The other Marines did the same.

"You cannot leave here," the woman said. Her glassy eyes were staring at them from one and a half heads above Araden's.

Those two with their pistols posed no threat to the fully armored and shielded Marines, but all of this had gone far enough for Akiban's taste.

"Put those weapons on the ground and step aside." She spoke slowly and in a low voice that froze blood in its vessels.

The woman raised her weapon and fired. She was obviously not trained in its use because she held it in one hand, the weapon arm outstretched in front of her. The round missed, sizzling past the Marines between Akiban and Alvarez, and struck the wall behind them.

"Get them!" Akiban hissed.

Alvarez and Vinne darted ahead while Nakata and Varen positioned themselves between the now hostile colonists and the lieutenant. Several more rounds were fired before Alvarez and Vinne finally reached their targets, striking the wall or harmlessly glancing off shields. Then the Marines were all over the man and the woman: Alvarez grabbed the wrist of Araden's weapon arm and pushed it out of the way, followed up with two punches in his face with her free hand, kicked him in the gut once, and finally took the weapon from his hand as he collapsed under her. Vinne forced the woman's weapon arm up and away from himself, elbowed her in the face, and spun the pistol out of her grip. The fight was over only seconds after it had begun, resulting in the two colonists lying on the ground, their arms wrenched painfully behind their backs, the Marines on top of them, holding them down.

"Secure the prisoners," Akiban ordered. "They're coming with us."

"Yes, ma'am!" Alvarez and Vinne replied in unison and started pulling the two defeated colonists to their feet, arms still at painful angles to quell any returning spirit of resistance.

Akiban marched straight to the door and hit the control panel. The door slid open and the lieutenant stepped outside. "Shit."

Where once had been the street along which the platoon had arrived in its Makos, there now was a sea of people. They had swarmed into the area, and the ground was invisible as far as the eye could see; the crowd was not only filling the street but also adjacent side roads and alleys. The Marines had retreated behind the Makos which were now positioned in a semicircle, forming a fortress, rocking back and forth heavily on their soft suspensions as the colonists pressed against them. Their boarding ramps were closed and Marines were holding back colonists who were trying to push through gaps in the improvised wall or crawling under the vehicles.

"Sitrep!" Akiban barked as she approached Huber, who was standing on the stairs with the other squad leaders and gazing out into the sea of people.

"FUBAR, ma'am," Huber said, his rifle in patrol position, left and right hand holding the weapons as if firing—trigger finger extended along the lower receiver—but at forty-five degrees toward the ground and close to the body. "They suddenly started closing in. We barely had time to set up the Makos as a shield. I was just about to report when you came out."

Frowning, Akiban bit her lower lip. This was a mess. Her platoon wasn't equipped for crowd control—and even if it had been, there were at least five hundred people out there. And this wasn't a scenario she had been trained to deal with. There was no standard solution, no procedure to adhere to. She felt like unleashing a litany of curses but managed to bite it back, taking a deep breath instead. She needed to focus.

"Huber, get two sentries inside. I don't want anyone coming at us from behind."

"Ma'am," he confirmed, and sent two of his Marines into the building.

Akiban calmed herself with another deep breath. Her mind reverted into a mode that had been drilled into her in training: break problems that are too complex to solve into smaller ones that you can solve. They had the codes and needed to get off the planet because comms with the _North Cape _were out. They could fire the signal beacon now, but in their current situation evac would be problematic at best. Who knew how many colonists would be crushed under the frigate or burnt by its thrusters—assuming Cooper wouldn't break off the maneuver when he saw what was happening in the first place. For a second, Akiban considered evacuating from the roof, but she discarded the idea because the building was not tall enough to ameliorate the heat issue. That meant that they had to get out on open ground, preferably the plains outside the colony, or at least away from the crowds. But with all the colonists pressing against the Makos, they wouldn't be driving anywhere anytime soon. She thought about shooting their way out but dropped the thought immediately; those were still their people. Even if they had gone rogue, or insane, or whatever it was that had happened to them, they were civilians. The events here had to be reported to the Alliance, but not at the cost of human lives.

They needed assistance. Fast. Of course there was still the garrison fort. Assuming the Marines there were still operational and sane, they could evacuate Akiban's platoon with their shuttles. Hopefully, the fort had shuttles. It should.

"What the hell is that?" Kara Miles's words tore Akiban out of her reverie. The private first class, 1st Squad's advanced marksman, was observing the area from the top of the stairs through the scope of her Avenger sniper rifle. "Ten o'clock, two hundred meters."

Akiban pulled her rifle from its weapon slot on her back and unfolded it, moving it into ready position to look through the scope in the direction indicated by Miles. The magnification of the Lancer rifle scopes was not as high as that of the sniper rifles; therefore, it took Akiban several seconds of scanning to find the disturbance in the crowd the sniper was referring to. Finally, she found it by tracking its aftermath, a swath of stumbling colonists that led up to a humanoid shape that was violently forcing its way through the crowd and toward the Marines.

"We got geth husks!" Huber screamed. He had found it before she had.

Now Akiban recognized it herself: the blue eyes and tubes, the torn patches of gray skin, the face frozen in the last moment of the victim's agony. She knew them from Alliance intel reports, and she had seen them in action once. She and her platoon had been sent to investigate an outpost which had stopped reporting in during the geth incursions. It had turned out the husks had been the outpost's crew, a platoon of Marines, turned into mindless creatures to kill their former brothers and sisters in arms.

"There's another one!" Miles called. "Eleven o'clock, two hundred fifty meters!"

Marines were already jumping up on the Makos with the help of others to push down colonists who were climbing up the bodies of those who had been crushed against the armors of the APCs[1]. The gun towers of the Makos were turned to face the inside of the fortress to prevent anyone from using the mass accelerator barrels to climb on top. The drivers who were still in their seats could only use the auxiliary cameras to see what was going on outside.

Exhaling forcefully to combat the headache that had been getting worse over the past few minutes, Akiban lowered her weapon. Unlike the colonists, the husks were a major threat. Now the situation was forcing her hand. She had never seen them jump, but with the increasingly large piles of bodies there would be a way across the Mako barricade sooner or later. Once the husks were close enough, they would discharge some weapon they carried that cooked shields and burned flesh. That would harm countless colonists in addition to the Marines.

"Miles, take out the husks."

"Shit! I can't just fire into the crowd!" the private exclaimed.

Akiban clenched her jaw. "That can't be helped. Fire your weapon, Marine!"

The woman was breathing heavily, holding on to her weapon with trembling hands. Akiban knew why—under different circumstances, she would even have sympathized with her. There were clear regulations on when weapons could be used against targets and when firing was to be avoided. For a sniper rifle, it was not allowed to fire the weapon with friendlies or noncombatants within a rectangle of ten times twenty meters in front of the shooter and two hand-widths from the shooter's perspective from there onward. A target in the middle of a crowd was way outside of what was allowed. Further, both Miles and Akiban knew that even if the round hit the target, there was a good chance that the projectile would punch through it and continue on its trajectory into the colonists behind the husk. They were either legally done or dead. Akiban preferred the former.

"Alesz!" Akiban barked. "Husks in the crowd! Neutralize!"

Second Squad's advanced marksman swore viciously and readied his sniper rifle.

"Rodriguez! Get your squad up here!" Akiban shouted.

The gunnery chief led her pairs of snipers up the stairs and positioned them so they could fire over the Makos.

"Husks in the crowd! Kill them!"

Avenger sniper rifles began to howl, sending deadly projectiles on their way, accompanied by swearing. Scowling, Akiban observed the effects of the projectiles on the targets. The husks were tough and took several rounds to bring down while collateral damage wreaked havoc on the colonists. Most rounds found their targets, but the situation grew more chaotic, and the firing more frantic and inaccurate as more and more husks appeared in the crowd, working their way through the masses.

"Shit!" one of the snipers from 4th Squad screamed but kept firing. By chance, Akiban saw why. A colonist had stumbled into his line of fire and had suffered a direct hit to the head. The husk had only been hit by the round post-penetration and a shower of brain matter and skull fragments.

The lieutenant lowered her rifle because the scope was narrowing down her field of vision. She needed to stay on top and keep the overview. A round fired from somewhere in the crowd struck the building somewhere above her head. She and the Marines around her ducked instinctively. Several more rounds followed but were as badly aimed as their predecessor.

"Can you see where it's coming from?" Nakata shouted.

"No way," Rodriguez replied, her voice calmer than anyone around her felt. "At least three different directions, all fired from crowd level."

"Forget the shooters! Just keep the husks away!" Akiban called. The shooters weren't dangerous enough to warrant even more collateral casualties. The situation was FUBAR but stable.

"What the hell..." Rodriguez muttered and lowered her rifle, only to raise it again and look through the scope. "Lieutenant, twelve o'clock, three hundred meters."

Akiban looked, opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Something that looked distantly like a husk was pushing its way through the crowd, violently forcing colonists out of the way, crushing others under its mass. It had the surface of a husk, but the shape was off, Akiban thought. She had never seen anything like it before. The torso was tilted to one side, distorted, and grew into a large blue sack that replaced the shoulder, mounting something that looked like a weapon. The entire thing had the mass of about three husks and was tall enough to be well visible in the sea of people. Akiban also noticed something else: None of the colonists showed any reaction to the alien creature near them. Though unlikely, the husks could go unnoticed in a crowd, but this thing certainly couldn't.

"Oh, that thing looks like it wants a hug," she muttered. "Rodriguez, take out that bloated blue thing! Twelve o'clock, two hundred eighty meters!"

The first rounds hit the stalking blue and gray balloon, but it turned out to be much more resilient than it looked, shrugging off the increasing amount of direct hits with no visible effect.

"Lieutenant, that thing doesn't look too impressed!" Rodriguez warned.

"I can see that," Akiban said. She was tempted to authorize the use of heavy weapons, but even a single grenade impact would cause a massacre among the colonists—and there was no guarantee it would take the thing out.

"Just keep firing. Connor, ready that grenade launcher!"

The bulky woman in heavy armor holstered her pistol and pulled the grenade launcher from her back. She swallowed hard and took a deep breath. She didn't like it one bit.

"Easy, Marine," Akiban said. "Fire only on my mark." She looked over at Miles who was now also firing at the husks, though she still seemed very insecure and managed only a low rate of fire. At least her fire team leader, Corporal Daniela Miller, had talked her into firing at all.

The bloated husk was drawing closer. It had now suffered over fifty direct hits and was still going with no visible damage. Meanwhile, the bodies crushed against the Makos were piled so high that Marines on top of the vehicles were fighting off colonists with their bare hands, punching, kicking, and shoving. At least the ramp of bodies wasn't very solid footing, which prevented the crowd from pushing up collectively—probably the last straw that kept the improvised fortress wall from being overrun. On the bright side, there were bodies stuffed under and between the Makos, making the way over the vehicles the only path inside the perimeter.

"Fifty meters!" Rodriguez called when the bloated husk suddenly came to a halt. The weapon on its balloon shoulder uncurled and fired. Colonists—and pieces of them—that had been standing in front of it were now flying through the air in the wake of the rapidly progressing shockwave. What looked like a biotic attack cascaded through the masses of bodies, blasting them out of the way, and hit Mako Three. The vehicle's kinetic barriers flickered and failed as the APC rocked and the Marines who were standing on top thrown off it.

"Heavy weapons!" Akiban screamed. "Kill it! Whatever it takes!"

Connor fired without hesitation, sending a grenade arching toward the large husk. It sailed through the air and hit its target dead on. It detonated on impact, throwing a cloud of dust and smoke in the air, riddling the colonists in the husk's vicinity with shrapnel as the husk itself staggered back.

"Fire again!" Akiban shouted.

Connor complied and hit. The grenade forced the husk back even further and rained even more shrapnel on the colonists nearby. This time, though, the husk returned fire. Another shockwave emerged from its cannon and raced toward the fortress, again in the direction of Three. The Mako's barriers had not regenerated enough to withstand the impact. The vehicle flipped over in a cloud of flying colonists and Marines. Dust dominated everyone's vision as the hit Mako came to a halt on its roof, several meters inside the semicircle of tanks.

"Fire for effect! Weapons free!" Akiban barked as colonists started streaming into the perimeter.

Trying not to place lethal shots, the Marines opened fire, but the one-sided fire fight soon turned into a one-sided brawl with the advantage on the other side as those closest to the Makos were engaged in melee.

"Close the line!" Morand was screaming, forcing the Marines in the front to form a barrier with their bodies and hold on to each other. They managed to close the gap with the assistance of more Marines leaning against their backs and pushing outward.

Akiban coughed, dust in her throat. "Two," she managed, suppressing more gagging. "Kill the big blue husk on your seven. Mass accelerator authorized."

Two's gun tower rotated to the left, zeroed in on the husk, and fired a 155-millimeter slug from its mass accelerator. The round was too fast for anyone to register its travel time, and the impact was instant. The immediate effects were obscured by more dust, but everything within ten meters of the impact was very dead.

"If you see any more of those, just blast them!" Akiban commed, rushing down the stairs. She could now see that two Marines were partially buried under the wreck of Three, and there might yet be more. She grabbed Corporal Wysocki, 3rd Squad, Echo Fire Team Leader, and shouted, "Dig them out!"

"Yes, Lieutenant!" he shouted back, barely audible over the noise of the screams of the Marines and the colonists.

Akiban flinched as Two's mass accelerator fired again. "Nakata!" she called, waving at the platoon non-com. "We need to get the driver out!"

Nakata nodded and ran down the stairs, taking several steps with each stride.

The colonists were pushing, kicking, and punching the Marines who were forming a barricade between the remaining Makos with their bodies. The attacks lacked effect, but that didn't stop the colonists from trying. Screaming, they were clawing at the Marines, trying to tear their helmets off or attempting to land punches between visors and chin guards. The Marines in the back row were holding on to knifes and sidearms of those in the front to prevent them from falling in the colonists' hands—at least the primary weapons in the back slots were relatively safe.

"We need to get outta' here," Nakata urged after he had opened the ramp of the capsized Mako.

"I know!" Akiban growled. Too much had happened too quickly, and the situation had spun out of control. This had turned into a battle, after all. If she remained passive and continued to let the enemy dictate the course of events, they were as good as dead—or worse. She had to gain the initiative and get her platoon out of that mess.

"Squad leaders on me!"

The gunnery chiefs assembled around her, always a wary eye on the human barricade.

"All right, listen up!" She cleared her throat. "We're pulling out. As soon as we've recovered all wounded and everybody is accounted for, we'll mount the buckets and get the hell out of here. We'll need more room, though. Hamann, your squad will fire a barrage of grenades into the crowd, then we'll shoot everybody who is pushing against the barricade. The buckets will move as soon as the pressure ceases. Three is a loss, so Third Squad will split up between Two and Four. The prisoners are going with Second Squad. Questions?"

Silence, tense expressions on their faces.

"Execute."

The wounded Marines were pulled from underneath the flipped Mako—medics cursing at the thoughts of possible consequences—while the squad leaders made sure their squads were ready to move.

"First Squad complete, one wounded" Huber reported.

"Second Squad missing two, two wounded," Morand said.

"Who's missing?" Akiban interrupted.

"Anderson and Rüthemann," Morand said. Corporal Rick Anderson, Charlie Fire Team Leader and Private First Class Patrick Rüthemann, Fire Team Delta heavy weapons operator.

"Shit." Marines didn't just go missing. They must have been snatched by the crowd in the confusion after the second shockwave impact. Akiban forced the pictures of her Marines' fate that her mind was painting away. "Carry on."

"Third Squad complete, one wounded."

"Fourth Squad complete."

"How bad are the injuries?" Akiban asked.

"Jenkins will be fine with a bit of medi-gel, but McCoy is out. She got under the bucket and needs medevac," Morand answered. Second Squad had taken a beating. With Corporal Maria Jenkins hurt and Private First Class Lynne McCoy, medic rifleman, incap in addition to one missing, Fire Team Delta had taken the worst of it.

"Hamann?"

"Matarin's leg got under the Mako. It's not pretty," Hamann said. Private Second Class Alan Matarin was one of 3rd Squads heavy weapon operators.

The lieutenant shook her head. "Make sure the buckets are ready to move. Hamann, get your squad ready to fire," she said, her left hand resting on her grenade pouch.

Hamann nodded and walked off.

After taking a sip from her water tank, Akiban ran over to the Marines that were holding back the crowd. "Marines!" she barked. "On my mark, Third Squad will lay down a barrage of grenades. When pressure ceases, you will open fire at the crowd! Stand by!" She turned around. "Hamann! Fire!"

"Fire!" the squad leader repeated.

Grenades sizzled through the air and over the heads of the barricade, striking somewhere in the tide of colonists.

Akiban raised her rifle to firing position and screamed, "Fire!"

The Marines released each other and, after getting pushed back several meters, opened fire. The unarmed and unarmored colonists stood no chance and were cut down by the dozens in the rain of bursts of projectiles.

Lowering her rifle, Akiban took a grenade from her ammo pouch, armed it, and threw it over the phalanx of Marines and into the crowd. It detonated, but the effect remained obscured by more colonists who were wading over the field of bodies to reestablish the pressure.

"Mount vehicles!" Akiban barked.

The three remaining Makos moved, lowering their boarding ramps. Marines started embarking in the chaos, pushing into the infantry compartments. Those in last—squad leaders, fire team leaders, and Akiban—waited at the bases of the ramps, counting Marines as they rushed in and covering the sides. When all her Marines were in, Akiban ran up the ramp, sat down, and hit the controls to raise it. She checked her HUD; all four squads were awaiting orders.

"All vehicles, go! Go! Go!" she commed.

The three Makos reversed for a few meters, then accelerated and plowed into the mass of colonists. Akiban barely managed to strap herself in as the driver, Private First Class Jennifer Gilmore, hit the thrusters, raising the Mako over the growing pile of bodies in its front. It landed softly, probably on more colonists, and continued on its bumpy way. From the inside, it felt like traversing uneven terrain. Soon the three Makos were out of the fray, and their wheels were finally rolling over the hard surface of the street rather than the bodies of colonists.

Akiban allowed herself to relax a bit and only now realized how bad her headache had gotten. She grimaced but resisted the urge to tear off her helmet and massage the back of her head. On her left, somebody started coughing, then retched and vomited.

"Sorry, I'm not feeling so well." Connor's voice.

"Just clean it up, for fuck's sake," Corporal Mike Arden, Bravo Fire Team Leader, moaned.

Akiban rolled her eyes as the smell of vomit shot into her nostrils. Huber, sitting opposite of her, had shoved a gloved hand under his visor and was pressing a finger against the bridge of his nose between the eyes. Looking around, Akiban could see that none of the Marines appeared to be in good shape.

"Is there anyone who doesn't have a headache here?" she muttered.

Everybody remained silent.

"Great."

Suddenly, Miles started coughing and vomited as well. Her last meal was greeted with half-heartedly disgusted moans.

Giving Huber's technique of combating the headache a shot, Akiban activated the comms. "Gilmore, Akiban."

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

"Fire the signal beacon as soon as we're clear of the city."

"Aye, ma'am."

Akiban didn't bother to check out. Only now did it start to dawn on her what had happened. It was reminiscent of waking up after a night of drinking, the head throbbing from hangover, and memories one didn't want starting to surface. She had ordered her Marines to fire at civilians. She had authorized the use of heavy weapons and mass accelerators. She had even thrown a grenade right into the mass of people. These thoughts were grinding her head in addition to the ache. Her career was over, and so were those of many of her Marines—if not of all of them. The incident would draw an investigation in its wake, and there was no way that would end well for her and her platoon. It was funny, she thought, how she willingly risked her life as a Marine, but the prospect of her career ending filled her with dread.

Grimacing, Akiban now pressed two fingers against her skull. Nausea spread in her stomach and she barely managed to keep her meal in.

Gilmore let the automatic reload system of the Mako's mass accelerator switch the ammo type, removing the slug and loading the signal beacon instead. She toggled down the power so the beacon wouldn't get torn apart and fired it.

While Akiban was not looking forward to making her report to Captain Cooper, she thought that everything was better than staying on this all-forsaken rock. She straightened in her seat and leaned her head back, thankful that at least the headache seemed to subside. Only now that her thoughts were clearing up as the adrenaline disappeared from her system did Akiban manage to be surprised at her own violent reaction. It had been pure frenzy. The husks had made her mind snap, and while she had been busy analyzing the tactical situation, she had subconsciously shifted the colonists into the enemy camp, considering them enemy assets from there on.

"I can see the _North Cape_," Gilmore announced on the squad's comm channel. "They're coming in pretty hot. Looks like they're going for a flyby before—"

Akiban didn't hear the rest. The Mako was rocked hard and she was pressed into her seat and toward the front of the vehicle. She didn't see it, but her stomach screamed that the Mako was spinning. She held on to a handle on the ceiling and braced her feet against the far wall. Another shock hit the Mako and Akiban's head snapped back and against the sidewall. She didn't even feel the impact.

* * *

[1] APC: Armored Personnel Carrier


	3. Chapter 3

**III**

Vinne's face was the first thing Akiban saw when she came around. The medic was leaning over her and had just used her armor's medi-gel system to wake her up.

"What happened?" she moaned, realizing that she was lying on the dusty ground of Parrin IV's barren plain.

"A mass accelerator slug hit the ground near us," Nakata explained. "The impact tore off our kinetic shields. One and Two got flipped over. Four is the only one still on its wheels."

"Casualties?" Akiban asked.

"None. A few dents and bruises, but everybody's still alive."

"The _North Cape_?"

Nakata shook his head. "We saw her get hit and go down. The crash site is about ten kilometers from here. I was about to send Four to check for survivors."

Slowly Akiban sat up and looked around. Two of the Makos were flipped on their roofs with Four standing watch, the turret scanning the area from behind a low crest. Marines were standing or sitting between the vehicles, eating, drinking, or tending to the wounded. The prisoners were kneeling next to each other. Their left ankles were cuffed to their right wrists, and they were blindfolded.

"Where did the slug come from?" she asked.

"We're not sure," Nakata admitted. "Could have been one of the colony's orbital defense satellites. Or there's another ship in orbit."

"You set up guard posts?" Akiban asked.

"Yes, Lieutenant," Nakata confirmed.

So much for being home for dinner, Akiban thought. With the frigate gone, they weren't going anywhere. The Makos' communication systems weren't powerful enough to reach the FTL comm buoy, which meant they couldn't even call in reinforcements. They were stuck on a planet full of batshit crazy colonists. What a party.

"Two doesn't look too great," she muttered, looking at the deformed wreckage of the Mako. "At least get One back on its wheels."

"We'll have to dig a hole under One and drive Four underneath it. Four's thrusters should be able to flip One back."

"Well, then I suggest you start digging," Akiban said, pleased that at least her headache was mostly gone. She got to her feet and stretched her arms and arched her back.

"Aye, Lieutenant," Nakata said and hurried off.

Akiban took a sip from her water tank and craned her neck. The hard box contained an elastic inner bubble that contracted as the amount of water decreased; that prevented the water from sloshing around and making sounds or affecting the Marine's balance.

Her main concern was the defense satellite. While it was designed to fire away from the planet at targets in space, which made it unlikely that its sensors were capable of tracking vehicles or infantry on the ground, it still posed a major threat to her platoon. And there was nothing she could do about it. And that annoyed her massively.

Shaking her head, Akiban forced herself to think about what she could do something about. In order to do anything, she first had to know what was going on with the colonists, and evidently also with the Marines at the local garrison fort who controlled the defense satellite.

Akiban walked over to the two prisoners. A grin she couldn't hold back spread over her hard features as she saw the two kneeling there in the dirt, unmoving. The man had a recently treated laceration on his forehead—blood was already drying around the wound—and the woman had a nasty looking bruise on her shoulder.

"Lieutenant," Alvarez said, acknowledging Akiban's presence. She was one of the two Marines guarding the prisoners.

Akiban nodded. "How are our guests?"

"Bit battered, still breathing," Alvarez said.

"Mhm," Akiban made and tore the blindfold from Araden's head. "Mister Araden, I trust the trip has been satisfying so far."

The man showed no reaction.

She nodded. "All right, one chance, little man. What the hell is going on here?"

Silence.

Akiban sighed, then she launched forward and kicked Araden in the face with her knee. The man fell backward as his blood splattered over the dry ground. She leaned over him and pressed her knee against his neck.

"Why were you trying to kill us, you piece of shit?"

Still silence.

Akiban shifted her weight and increased the pressure on the man's neck. "Your friends took two of my Marines. I want to know where they are and what's going to happen to them!"

Araden gasped because of the pressure to his larynx but showed no other reaction.

Swearing, Akiban pulled him to his knees and grabbed his throat, squeezing his windpipe, and looked at him up from close. His gaze was empty, as if his eyes were looking through her. His breathing was ragged and shallow as streaks of blood ran down from his nose and mouth. Akiban pulled her combat knife from its sheath and let the blade pass close to Araden's eyes, again earning no reaction.

"That's like threatening a fucking vegetable," she said and sheathed the blade again. "Medic!"

Vinne came running and stopped behind Akiban. "Lieutenant?"

She looked at him, raising an eyebrow. "When did this guy turn into a plant?"

After activating his omni-tool, Vinne performed a full body scan of Araden and checked the results. "Everything seems to be normal. Brain activity is a bit weird, but that might just be shock."

"Normal?" Akiban pulled her knife from its sheath again and, with a quick motion, buried the tip of her blade in Araden's trapezius. The man didn't flinch.

"Shit!" Vinne exclaimed.

She pulled the knife out again. "Patch him up with medi-gel and find out what's wrong with him, because he certainly isn't normal."

"Uh, aye, Lieutenant."

She wiped the bloody knife on Araden's clothing and sheathed it. "Check her, too."

The sun was already sinking toward the horizon and would disappear behind it soon. A thick mass of clouds was now dominating the majority of the sky and temperatures were dropping rapidly. It was going to be a cold night.

"Stand clear!" Nakata shouted and Marines cleared away from the Makos. The driver of Four fired the thrusters and the Mako rose into the air, flipping One back on its wheels as it went. Marines cheered and Akiban nodded.

"Squad leaders on me!" she shouted when the dust had cleared.

The squad leaders and Nakata assembled around her.

"Two things," the lieutenant announced. "First, we need to check the _North Cape _crash site for survivors. I'll do that with First Squad. We'll take one bucket with us, the other will stay here. We'll salvage personnel and equipment from the wreckage and bring them back here. I want Fourth Squad to cover as we move.

"Second, we don't know how long we'll be stranded here. Sooner or later, someone's gonna come looking for us; and until then, we need to stay alive. Nakata, you'll supervise our camp here. Set up some observation posts around the camp, too; make sure they dig in. Establish a guard rotation schedule. Everybody else should remain in those Makos that still have shields. Try to get those of Two back online, but leave them if they're beyond repair."

"All of that won't help us if they decide to fire the satellite again," Rodriguez warned.

"I know, but we can't change that. They either can't track us or think that we're not worth the fuss. Either way is fine with me." Akiban knew that this explanation wasn't very reassuring, but it was the only one she had.

"There's another problem," Nakata said. "The orbital defense satellites can only be fired from the garrison fort's CIC. That means that whatever is affecting the colonists is also affecting the Marines at the fort. That also means that we'll have to restrict our comm traffic to short point-to-point bursts. Long range broadcasts are a no-go, unless we want the enemy to be listening in."

Akiban took a deep breath. "You're right. That's a danger we can't ignore. There's possibly an entire hostile battalion less than fifty kilometers from here."

"Gunnery Chief!" Private First Class Flavio Matelli came running, sniper rifle still in his hands.

"What is it, Matelli?" Rodriguez asked.

"The colonists are on the move, ma'am. They're headed for the crash site."

"You've got your orders," Akiban said. "Huber, get your squad ready. We're moving in five. I'll go check out the colonists."

After reaching the observation post about fifty meters from the center of the camp where the Makos stood, Akiban took the sniper rifle from Matelli and looked through the scope in the direction the sniper indicated.

"You creepy-ass motherfuckers," she whispered as she watched the scene unfold. A convoy of vehicles had formed at the edge of the colony and was getting ready to move out. With the scope set to highest magnification, Akiban could make out humans, husks—both the normal and the big ones—and a number of transportation vehicles that, judging by their appearance, were usually employed in farming operations. Akiban had started her observation just in time to watch the convoy set out in the direction of the _North Cape_'s crash site.

She handed the sniper rifle back to Matelli. "Huber, Akiban. The colonists are headed for the crash site. We need to move now. Pick me up at the western observation post."

"Copy that, Lieutenant."

"Akiban out."

A minute later, One drove up to the observation post and Huber lowered the boarding ramp. Akiban jumped inside and took her seat while Huber raised the ramp again and signaled Gilmore to move. The Mako launched ahead at maximum speed, racing over the plains of Parrin IV.

It was 2319 _North Cape _shipboard time when the Mako arrived at the frigate's crash site. The vessel had torn a three-kilometer-long swath into the landscape, littered it with debris, and had finally come to a halt in a charred depression between the barren dunes.

Akiban had allowed her Marines to sleep during the short ride so they could get some rest. She was convinced that the situation was going to deteriorate before it improved, and she needed her platoon at its best.

"Gilmore, stop next to the wreck," she ordered. "Wake up, Marines! It's show time!"

The Mako stopped and Akiban lowered the ramp. She jumped out, followed by the rest of the squad, and observed the wreckage. The ship was still largely intact. The wings that connected the four engines with the angular fuselage were buried under piled up dirt. Although the gaping hole in the dorsal hull between Engineering the main cargo elevator was the only visible damage, all of the systems seemed to be dead—propulsion, illumination, signal lights, everything offline.

"Miller, take Miles for a walk around the ship. Let me know what you find," Akiban said. "Huber, find an access point and get inside."

The non-coms confirmed the orders and moved out. Akiban took the time to walk over to the starboard wing and put a hand on the armored surface. "Gilmore, drive the Mako on that crest in the north and keep me updated on how close that freak-show procession is."

"Aye, Lieutenant." One moved out.

A wrenching sound came down from the side of the ship, followed by somebody shouting, "Identify yourself!" Then: "Gunnery Chief Huber, Land Rider One!"

Akiban climbed up the wing and joined the other Marines at the hatch they had opened. "I don't want to rush you," she shouted into the hatch, "but we're gonna have company soon. I suggest you haul ass and get the hell out of there!"

"Lieutenant Akiban?" a voice shouted back. It was completely dark inside.

"The one and only!" she called.

"Right. We need assistance. We got wounded!"

"Got it." She turned to Huber. "Chief, get your people in there. I want the entire ship searched for survivors and everybody evacuated ASAP!"

"Aye, Lieutenant," Huber confirmed. "Alvarez, Vinne, start getting the crew out from this deck. Arden, take Connor and McKenzie and search the other decks."

Acknowledging the orders, the Marines moved out. Soon, members of the _North Cape_'s crew started emerging from the breached airlock. Akiban recruited the healthiest looking to help the wounded down the frigate's wings, assisting them herself and counting them as they descended. In the end, twenty-six crew members, including Captain Cooper and Lieutenant Commander Ktenge, stood, sat, or lay next to their ship's wreckage, tended to by 1st Squad's medics Vinne and McKenzie.

Huber walked over to where Akiban and Ktenge stood. The commander's uniform was torn at the left shoulder and she had a bruise on the cheek on the same side.

"The captain is out," she was saying to Akiban. "He'll live, but we pretty much had to stick his head in medi-gel to keep him from buying it right there. He's ripe for surgery, but the medical bay is useless without power."

The lieutenant nodded thoughtfully. "Total power loss?"

"The impact just grazed Engineering, but the control systems initiated an emergency shutdown to prevent the eezo core from going critical and giving the ship the rest. The containment field kicked it immediately."

"Emergency power?" Akiban asked.

"Lasted just long enough for me to wipe the ship's databanks. Encryption protocols, mission reports, troop deployment, all gone."

"I guess the comm system is a loss, too?"

"Yes. All of the main systems kicked it. I still don't know how Solovyov landed without the mass effect fields online." Ktenge reached for a pocket of her uniform; Akiban had seen her put dogtags in there earlier.

"Ma'am, Lieutenant."

"What is it, Chief?"

Blocking the view for the rest of the crew and the Marines with his body, Huber passed a bundle of cloth into Ktenge's hands.

"Thank you, Chief," she said and put it into the pocket she had had her hand on before.

"Thirty-two casualties, six heavily and twelve lightly wounded," Huber reported. Twenty-six remained of a crew of fifty-eight.

"Gilmore, this is Akiban," the lieutenant commed.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"How much time do we have?"

"They're advancing slowly, but I wouldn't push it beyond ten minutes."

Akiban accepted Gilmore's estimation. "All right. Get the bucket back here. We got wounded to transport."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

"Akiban out. " She cut the channel and turned to look at Ktenge and Huber. "Here's the deal. Huber, have your Marines get as many supplies out of the ship as you can. I don't know what happened to the colonists, but it could have been something in the food or water. Field rations, water, and medi-gel are top priority. We don't know how much longer we'll be stranded on this rock, and I don't want to touch anything that's from here."

Huber nodded as the Mako drove up next to them.

"We'll fit the wounded and as many of the crew as we can into the infantry compartment of the bucket. We'll strap the supplies to the dorsal hull and everybody else can ride on top. It's not great, but it'll do. We need to get back to our camp, and we're not leaving anyone behind. Execute."

"What do you intend to do once we're back at the camp?" Ktenge asked as Huber rushed off.

Honestly, Akiban didn't know. And that bothered her. Leadership had to look confident. A leader who didn't look confident caused more harm than a bad decision made confidently. Akiban had seen entire units fall apart during training because the inexperienced officers and non-coms had not inspired enough confidence in their troops, something which had led to doubt and dwindling morale. She had to prevent that from happening at any cost. Yet that was the core of the problem. The difference between this situation and her training was even bigger than that between her training and actual combat.

Akiban sighed. It was already getting dark—and cold. The hardsuits would protect the Marines from the low temperatures, but the uniforms of the Navy crew were less suited for that. She would have to come up with a solution for that, too.

"We still need to reset the comm buoy and get word of what's happened here to Operations Command. In order to do that, we got to get our hands something that can generate a strong enough signal for the buoy to read it. We already got the codes," she finally told Ktenge.

"The colony," the commander concluded.

"We'll have to go back in," Akiban agreed. "We'll go straight to their uplink dish and send the reset codes from there."

"It'll probably be guarded," Ktenge warned.

"That I'm prepared to deal with," Akiban replied grimly.

"Lieutenant! We're good to go!" Huber called from the Mako.

Akiban led Ktenge to the vehicle and helped her up, then she let the lieutenant commander and Huber pull her up to the back of the tank. It was crowded up there, but not as much as inside.

"Gilmore, go," she commed after she had settled in behind the gun tower.

Gilmore set the Mako in motion carefully so not to throw the passengers off it. They weren't going anywhere near top speed, but they moved faster than the colonists were on foot.

The air was blowing cold into Akiban's face as she gazed ahead. Her omni-tool indicated that the temperature had already fallen below zero degrees centigrade, only minutes after sunset. She felt none of the cold below her armor, but she could tell that the naval crew was freezing. She also suspected that the lack of vegetation would cause the air to get even colder before it warmed up the next morning.

"How many thermo-blankets do we have?" she asked Huber in a low voice.

The gunnery chief gazed at the sky, raising an eyebrow. "We usually pack one per Marine plus one spare in each bucket."

"That's forty-two."

"Yeah," Huber confirmed.

The blankets were airtight and minimized heat loss of the bodies that were wrapped into them. They would even allow the unarmored crew to sleep outside. But they wouldn't protect them if the Marines at the fort decided to fire the satellite again. While Akiban doubted they would do that and endanger their expedition to the crash site, she feared that once they had what they wanted from the wreckage, they might fire again—maybe it was the ship they wanted largely intact, not the Marines alive.

She closed her eyes. Nobody would survive the impact of a ship-to-ship mass accelerator slug that had blown a frigate out of the sky; even the shockwave, caused by the secondary impact after the slug had punched through the ship, had already caused significant damage to the Makos. Although the energy of the slugs was directed and not released like in an explosion, the forces unleashed in the immediate vicinity of the impact were too high for the tanks to withstand, let alone for unarmored and unprotected crewmen.

One option Akiban considered was spreading her assets out beyond the radius of effect of a single impact, but that would only impede the operational status of her platoon; and it would only delay the inevitable if they really decided to destroy them.

Another possibility was to move closer to the city. The last impact had left visible marks on the outskirts of Balance Point, and a direct hit without a ship's kinetic barriers and hull in the way was certain to cause substantial damage. Therefore, assuming the colonists weren't suicidal, they would have to place the slug farther away to minimize the damage. That meant that staying within a few kilometers of the colony, which their camp currently was, would reduce forces they would be exposed to, maybe enough to survive inside a Mako.

There was another problem, however. Akiban yawned. Placing the crewmen, who had just lost their ship, in sleeping holes outside the Makos, wrapped in thermo-blankets and exposed to the effects of possible orbital bombardment, would be bad for their morale, and Ktenge wouldn't like it—not to mention that the Marines in their armors were better protected against the cold and more used to adverse circumstances. But the Makos were the only real chance to survive another bombardment, and Akiban didn't want to risk her combat-capable platoon by placing any more of her Marines outside than necessary to maintain the observation posts. She would have to work out a compromise that protected her Marines without demoralizing the crew any more than it already was.

After Gilmore stopped the Mako next to the western observation post, Akiban checked in with the Marines manning the foxhole. They continued into the heart of the camp about a hundred meters from the fortified dune crest. Little had changed since their departure. The Marines had dug several field toilets at the foot of the small hill that constituted the camp's northern border; in addition to the four observation posts, those were the only modifications made to the terrain. Mobility was more important than fortification.

As Huber's squad was helping the crew down from and out of the Mako, Akiban jumped down from the tank and strode over to Two. The vehicle still rested on its roof at the center of the camp, where it had been flipped over. Its boarding ramp was open and served as a sort of canopy while the faint red light of the tank's internal illumination betrayed minimal movement inside.

When she arrived, Gunnery Chief Morand, standing outside the vehicle and leaning inside, was discussing something with Hamann who squatted below the squad leader's seat.

"Where are Nakata and Rodriguez?" Akiban asked, leaning against the frame of the entrance.

"Checking the observation posts, Lieutenant. They should be back in a few minutes," Hamann replied.

"All right," Akiban muttered, gazing around the Mako's interior. It was crowded with almost two Marines squeezed below every seat, some sitting on the laps of others, and some pressed into the narrow corridor between legs. The two heavily wounded Marines were in the driver compartment and were being watched over by those sitting closest to them.

"How did it go?" Morand asked.

"We got twenty-six survivors and a few boxes of supplies from the _North Cape_. The ride's a loss, though. All systems are dead, and it's stuck meters deep in the dirt. By now it's probably overrun by our friends."

"Twenty-six," Hamann repeated.

"Yeah, it's fucked up," Akiban said, shaking her head. "Listen, we've got wounded and plenty of crew who need shelter. They won't last long in those flimsy uniforms of theirs. Morand, Start handing out thermo-blankets to the survivors. Set up a supply post so they can get water and food—half a liter and one ration per person. And get your medics out there to help with the wounded."

Morand and Hamann confirmed the orders and disappeared into the darkness, shouting instructions. Having heard Akiban, the medics sitting inside the Mako waded their way outside, apologizing, and joined their squad leaders.

Akiban pulled a field ration from one of the packs on her equipment belt and opened it. She leaned against the rear hull of the Mako and began nibbling at the dry bar; it tasted acceptable enough but still had the consistency of concrete that turned to ash when it touched the lips. For a moment, Akiban considered ordering somebody to crack the supply cases and prepare a real meal—as real as starship food prepared in the field went, anyway—but then she decided against going through the trouble. She needed time to plan.

Biting off another chunk, Akiban fired up her omni-tool and brought up the city map of Balance Point. It wasn't up to date, but the uplink dish was probably one of the first structures constructed and was likely to still be in the same place indicated by the map. It was in the north of the colony at the foot of Mount Verne, on the opposite side of the colony from the camp. To get there, they would either have to cut through the colony or drive around it and approach the dish across inclined and open terrain. If the dish was defended by either type of husk or hostile Marines, then the approach over open terrain was a clear disadvantage. However, colonists could try to stop them in the city, and that would result in a high number of civilian casualties.

"Lieutenant?" Ktenge, wrapped in a thermo-blanket, tore Akiban out of her thoughts.

"Yes, Commander?"

"My people are going to need shelter, Lieutenant, especially the wounded."

Akiban nodded. "We can make some room in Two. We've already got our wounded in there. I suppose there should be enough room for your six with heavy injuries."

"Only six?" Ktenge sounded angry.

Akiban had dreaded this confrontation. She knew that Ktenge would stand up for her crew, but there was a tactical reality here no one could afford to disregard. She tried the cooperative and respectful approach. "I know you care for your crew, and I want to help them the best I can, but I need to keep my Marines sheltered and ready to move. Unfortunately, we've lost one of our buckets already and our capacity to shelter personnel is limited."

"I understand that, Lieutenant," Ktenge said in a low voice. "But you can't just leave them out here, wrapped in thermo-blankets. Morale is down already and leaving them outside with no shelter where they can't move because of the blankets will give them the rest."

"Let's go for a walk," Akiban muttered, leading Ktenge away from the Mako.

"Why don't we seek shelter in the city?" Ktenge asked when they were out of earshot of the tank.

"Because the colony is full of batshit crazy people who tried to kill us. Oh, and there are husks, too. Not just the small ones, either, but also big biotic ones. The colony is off limits for noncombatant personnel."

"You're joking."

"Afraid not." Akiban took a deep breath. "I have no idea what's going on here. Those people seemed to be perfectly normal at first, but then they attacked us side by side with husks. They took two of my Marines captive and wounded several others before we could get out of there with the reset codes. We signaled for evac as soon as we were clear of the city, but all that came down were an accelerator slug and the _North Cape _with a big hole in her hull."

"That was the accelerator fire we picked up?" Ktenge asked.

"Yes."

"You were firing at colonists?"

"We were firing at husks," Akiban corrected her. "But there were fatalities among the colonists."

"You mean there were colonists near the husks when you authorized mass accelerator fire?" Ktenge's voice was sharp.

Akiban closed her eyes and lowered her head. When Ktenge put it like that, it did sound pretty bad. She decided to keep the detail about firing grenades into the crowd to herself. It was unlikely that she would get away with it. Maybe she didn't even want to, but a conflict with the commander wouldn't serve the mission. Akiban rubbed her eyes as she felt tears threatening to shoot into them. What a fucking mess, she thought. Maybe she wasn't even fit to command her platoon anymore, yet who would take her place? They needed every rifle they could get and stepping down from her position, voluntarily or not, wouldn't serve anyone. Or would she just cause more damage if she clung to her post?

"Look, there was a type of husk I've never seen before," she finally said without looking at Ktenge. "It had some sort of biotic weapon that took out one of our Makos and just shrugged off our small arms fire. We had to take them out. If I hadn't given those orders, neither of us would be here."

"That's just great," Ktenge called, rolling her eyes.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. See those two kneeling on the ground, wrapped in blankets?" She pointed at two shapes in the darkness that were being guarded by two Marines. "We took two prisoners. Interrogation has yielded no results. It was like talking to plants." Good change of topic.

"So we're stuck here? " Ktenge asked.

"Until we can get a message off world, yes."

"Great."

"Listen, we need to give your people something to do. I suggest we let them dig holes and set up emergency tents in them. We got enough of those. It's not great, but it's better than them cowering on the ground like small heaps of misery."

"Lieutenant?" Nakata's voice in the dark.

"Here!" she called.

Closing steps announced the operation chief's arrival. "Ma'am," he said, acknowledging Ktenge's presence, and turned to Akiban. "Lieutenant, perimeter is established and guard schedule is go. No progress in interrogating the prisoners. Our wounded are stable."

"Good," Akiban said, nodding. "The _North Cape _survivors are here now. We've also got some supplies out of the wreckage, but the crash site is now overrun by hostiles."

"You got everyone back in one bucket?" Nakata asked.

"Not everyone," Ktenge answered. "There were only twenty-six survivors."

"Damn," Nakata said.

"Chief, I need you to start handing out emergency tents and shovels to the crew. Show them how to dig holes so they can set their tents up in them. It's not the best sort of cover, but at least they'll be busy. Distribution of water, food, and thermo-blankets has already been arranged.

"There are six heavily wounded with the survivors. Make room for them in Two and make sure there's always an additional medic around."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

"One more thing, Chief. When you're done, assemble the squad leaders. We need to do some planning," Akiban added.

"Wilco."

"Go," she said, sending Nakata off.

"So, what's your hypothesis?" Ktenge asked to break the sullen silence after the operations chief had left.

Akiban bit her lower lip. "Something here is very wrong. Colonists cooperating with husks in an attack on Alliance forces? And I've never seen husks fire orbital defense satellites; that means the Marines of the garrison fort are affected, too. But why? And by what? Did they change sides? I'd believe that if they hadn't thrown themselves at us like rabid varren. No, they were completely out of their minds, crazed. The geth must have found some way to turn our own people against us."

"That's disturbing," Ktenge said.

"Yes," Akiban agreed. "I'm not sure we'll be able to find out what it is. Our primary objective is now to warn the fleet. Once they know about this, they'll figure something out—hopefully including how to help these people. Until then, we need to focus on getting this message off world. Though I have little doubt that there will be more casualties, I still think that we need to try to avoid them as much as we can."

A commotion near the flipped Mako drew the attention of the two officers. They looked at each other briefly and made their way over to the source of the noise. When they arrived, they saw several Marines—Nakata among them—lined up against a crowd of fleet personnel.

"Only the wounded," Nakata was saying. "Lieutenant's orders."

"Your lieutenant isn't the ranking officer here," somebody from the crowd called. The faces were unidentifiable in the dark, even near the Mako.

"What's going on here, Chief?" Akiban said directly to Nakata, ignoring the crewmen as she forced herself between the lines. Ktenge followed her as best she could without risking losing her thermo-blanket.

"Several crewmen have expressed their disagreement with only the heavily wounded being allowed inside the Mako, Lieutenant," Nakata answered.

Akiban nodded and turned toward the crewmen. "Is this true?" she asked, her voice cool.

A lieutenant standing in the front row—Akiban remembered him working in the CIC—stepped forward. "Look, it's freezing out here, and these blankets don't allow us to move. We'll be dead before we can set up the first tent."

Aware that she wasn't his superior, Akiban nodded diplomatically. She had several options and briefly assessed them in her mind. She could just send them away and risk lowering morale even further while driving a wedge between the Marines and the crew. Or she could give in to the demands, weakening her own position of authority in the process, and make them happy. Or she could involve Ktenge, although there was no guarantee the commander would support her. And there was the option of trying to explain the situation—something that never worked under dire circumstances.

"You have three Makos and we aren't allowed to take shelter in any of them?" the fleet lieutenant accused.

"You need to get in line, Lieutenant!" Akiban finally hissed, her voice sharp. "I understand that the situation isn't ideal, but Mako One will be leaving for the colony soon. Mako Two is our field hospital. Mako Four is on guard duty, and all the Marines inside are on standby to reinforce the observation posts if necessary. There just isn't any room."

"There's still room in this one," the lieutenant insisted, pointing at Two. "And the Marines on standby can just as well be waiting outside."

"Lieutenant Akiban," Ktenge said. "A word."

Akiban suppressed a sigh and turned away from the confrontation. The lieutenant she was arguing with flashed her a triumphant smile.

"The man's got a point," the commander said so only Akiban could hear it. "You've got room and you're reluctant to share it."

"It's nothing personal," Akiban said. "I need to maintain the highest possible operational status. We could come under attack any second. And we've still got work to do. This isn't about comfort. I suggest you get your people in line, ma'am. If you give him what he wants now, then word will spread, and you'll be dealing with all sorts of demands and insubordination soon."

"This crew is disciplined," Ktenge said, her voice as icy as the air. "I'll deal with any further demands, Lieutenant. You make room in the guard Mako. That's an order."

Akiban pursed her lips and nodded. "Yes, ma'am." She turned back on the confrontation. "Operations Chief, clear out the infantry compartment of Four to make room for _North Cape _survivors. Marines on standby can wait outside."

"Yes, Lieutenant," Nakata confirmed reluctantly. "Ladies and gentlemen, please follow me."

"That wasn't so hard, was it, Lieutenant?" Ktenge asked after Nakata and the crew had left.

At least a dozen retorts crossed Akiban's mind, but she bit them back and said, "No, it wasn't, ma'am," and scratched Ktenge from the list of people she could count on.

"What's next?" the commander asked.

"I'll be meeting with my squad leaders to plan our attack on the colony's uplink dish."

"I'll join you."

"Of course, ma'am."

Ten minutes later, Akiban, Ktenge, Nakata, and the four squad leaders stood in the middle of the camp. The commander had not joined who remained of her crew in the Mako; she made a good job of not showing that she was freezing in spite of the thermo-blanket.

"Sitrep," Akiban ordered. Her omni-tool was showing 11 degrees centigrade in the negative. It was 0026 _North Cape _shipboard time.

"The survivors are now cramped inside Four. It's not pretty, and they're complaining, but they refused to take turns," Nakata reported.

"The surviving crew has been provided with water and rations. My squad is currently standing by in One. I told them to get as much rest as they can," Huber said.

"Most of the wounded in Two are stable," Morand said. "But one of the crew— Serviceman Tacescu, I think—isn't looking too well. She needs surgery, and we don't have the necessary equipment here. The medics give her a few more hours at most."

"Nothing to report," Hamann said.

"The observation posts report nothing out of the ordinary," Rodriguez reported. "The colonists are still crowded around the crash site. Doesn't look like they'll be going anywhere anytime soon. The colony looks quiet."

"All right," Akiban said after a moment and crossed her arms in front of her chest. "We'll maintain the camp as it is for now. So far, the enemy has made no move against us, though I have no doubt they could if they wanted to. It seems like we're just not important enough for them to bother with taking us out. We'll make use of that opportunity and say thanks later.

"As you know—"

"You do realize that one of my crew is dying right now?" Ktenge interrupted.

"Yes," Akiban confirmed. "I do. And I'm sorry. But we can't change it."

"There must be equipment in the colony to save her," Ktenge insisted. "Either get that equipment here or get her there, whichever works for you."

The non-coms shot Akiban skeptical glances.

"That's tactically just not feasible, ma'am," Akiban said emphatically. "The city is hostile territory, and we just don't have the forces to protect the camp, break into their hospital, and pursue our main mission objective of getting the buoy back online at the same time."

"I'm not going to lose another crew member because you like playing things safe, Lieutenant," Ktenge said. "I saw it before. You like to hold resources back and ignore facts in order to be able to respond to hypothetical scenarios. While I'm willing to give you some leeway in making decisions, I'm not going to accept my people dying because you're too lazy to help them!"

For a moment, Akiban wondered if it was true. It was always easy to ask those questions in retrospect. Now, though, she hadn't made a decision yet. Could she save Serviceman Tacescu? And what if her Marines died in the attempt to steal the necessary equipment? And what if they succeeded and the serviceman died anyway? What if both happened? She pulled her helmet from her head and let it hang down her back loosely, only the life support and power tube connecting it to her armor.

"Is that an order, ma'am?" Akiban hated politics. Ever the more she hated her own talent for manipulation. If Ktenge ordered her to send Marines to retrieve the equipment, she could blame the commander for the decision and any consequences. The impact on her conscience, though, was another. She knew what she was doing, and she wasn't doing it in favor of the mission. Or was she? The target of her manipulation wasn't Ktenge but the non-coms. She had to ensure their complete loyalty and trust while covering her uncertainty with confidence while doing something against her better wisdom.

"I'd rather you cooperated with me without me having to order you around, Lieutenant."

Akiban's mind projected a vicious curse. "Is that an order, ma'am?" she repeated, emphasizing each word.

"No. It's your call, Lieutenant."

No easy way out. You didn't make XO if you didn't have a few tricks up your own sleeve, Akiban guessed.

"I didn't see Doctor Petric among the survivors. Did she make it?" Akiban asked.

"Among the heavily wounded," Ktenge replied.

Akiban took a deep breath. "Morand, when we're done here, I want you to grab the medics and find out which of them are qualified to perform the surgery and what equipment they need to do it."

"Aye, Lieutenant," Morand confirmed, his voice less than confident.

Akiban didn't feel like sending any more Marines into the colony than absolutely necessary. What she wanted even less, though, was to spend more time in the colony than absolutely necessary. One squad and Mako for the dish, another squad and Mako for the hospital. Both could move in at the same time, thus splitting the enemy's attention.

"It'll all depend on speed. I want to be in and out before they can mount any form of coordinated response. I'll take First Squad and Nakata to the dish. We'll break through any defenses and transmit the reset codes. We'll hold the position and wait for the buoy to come back online so we can send our message.

"If it turns out that we can save the serviceman, Second Squad will break into the local hospital and steal any equipment we need to stabilize her. Take one of Fourth Squad's heavy weapon ops with you. While you're at it, check if you can find anything to help the captain and to get our wounded Marines back on their feet. Don't waste time, though. If you can't find it, just leave it and get out. Same applies if things get too hot. I don't want to lose another bucket, and certainly not the Marines with it. Have I made myself clear?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," the non-coms replied in unison.

Akiban looked at her watch. 0032. "I expect you to report back at double-oh four-oh. Questions?"

"If we start both missions, we'll have to clear the survivors out of Four and also remove it from our guard setup," Nakata noted.

"Maybe the impending death of one of their crewmen will convince them to start digging. I won't wait with the attack until it's warm."

"Yes, Lieutenant," Nakata acknowledged.

"Dismissed." The non-coms vanished in the dark. Ktenge stayed.

Akiban scowled at what she thought was the horizon. From the moment they had landed on this rock, everything had started going down the drain. They had the codes, but every single achievement, no matter how little—and there weren't many—had come at too great a cost. Two Marines MIA, three wounded, two of which incapacitated, the _North Cape _shot out of the sky, more than half of the crew KIA. It was a shitty day as they got.

"You should go and warm up in the Mako while you still can," she told the trembling Ktenge. "Ma'am."

Ktenge remained quiet but followed Akiban's advice and left in the direction of Four. The woman was tough, Akiban had to give her that. But she was a pain in the ass. She had the habit of getting people to do stupid things. Akiban wished for a regulation that put Marines above Navy personnel in the chain of command on the ground.

"Lieutenant!" Nakata's voice on the comms.

"Go ahead."

"Lights in the air to the north west. We suspect light aircraft propulsion—possible air raid."

"Copy," she responded and was already reaching for her helmet. "Everybody out of the buckets, except Two. Hide all noncombatants behind it. Everybody else spread out. No concentration for easy targets."

"Wilco."

She snapped her helmet on her head, sealing it with her hardsuit, fired up the kinetic shields, and readied her rifle. "Open fire only on my mark. Accelerators first, infantry only on clear target."

"Got it."

"That's all."

"Nakata out."

Akiban arrived at the crest north of the camp as the _North Cape _survivors were being herded away from Four and toward the wreck of Two by several Marines, thanking them with a litany of curses and insults.

"Sitrep," Akiban barked, throwing herself on the crest next to Nakata.

"Four confirms two A-Sixty-One gunships on direct approach from the garrison fort. No other craft detected. ETA in two minutes."

"Two A-Sixty-Ones," Akiban muttered. "That's not much firepower. If this place wasn't shit-ass crazy, I'd say it's aggressive reconnaissance."

"Yes," Nakata agreed. "Those things aren't good at fighting Makos, especially over open terrain. Plus, they can't carry enough infantry to take us on—not even in our weakened state."

Akiban nodded. "All hands, fire on my mark only. I repeat, fire on my mark only." The icons on her HUD indicated orders acknowledged by all squads.

She raised her rifle into firing position and looked through the scope. There they were, two pairs of lights coming from the vector thrusters of the gunships in fast approach. They were coming in fairly low, no higher than fifty meters. That was a bit too low for recon.

"Bit low," Nakata muttered to himself.

"What I thought," Akiban agreed.

As the lights came closer, Akiban felt the urge to order weapons free. The Makos' mass accelerators could pick them out of the sky, or at least deter them, before they could cause any damage. The gunships' armament was dangerous to both deployed infantry and to the vehicles, but only if they got close enough. On the other hand, opening fire first could provoke a more aggressive and powerful response, one that was possibly beyond her platoon's capability to deal with.

She felt her heart rate quicken as he gunships reached weapon range. Keeping her breathing even, she really wanted to open fire. She had one hand on her rifle's pistol grip, the other on her comm switch. The gunships didn't fire, however. They broke off about a hundred meters from the edge of the camp and went for a close flyby without changing altitude. Then they arced toward the colony and came around for another approach. This time, they went for a flyover, passing right above the camp. Still no fire.

Turning to come to lie on her back, Akiban looked after the gunships as they flew another arc and set course back to the garrison fort.

Only now did Akiban dare to relax. She took a deep breath, then commed, "All hands, recover. Squad leaders on me. My location: crest, north boundary of camp."

The squad leaders acknowledged her orders and she cut the channel after signing out. After sitting up and straightening her back, she yawned, her pulse slowing down bit by bit. She drank from her water supply and leaned her head back. No casualties—that was a first since coming here. Although the enemy now probably had precise intel on their numbers and resources, Akiban was happy that everybody was still alive. If they wanted to get their message off world, they needed to move now.

One after another the squad leaders arrived at the crest; Hamann even had Ktenge in tow.

"Morand, what did the medics say?" Akiban asked when they all had gathered in front of her.

The gunnery chief sighed. "Long story short: The hardware we need can't be transported. We'd have to take the serviceman with us, and the medics would have to perform the surgery in the hospital. Ideally, though, somebody else should do it. They're qualified, but this should be done by an actual surgeon."

"I see," Akiban muttered. "How long would that surgery take?"

"About half an hour if an experienced doctor did it, but our medics estimate about twice as long with their lack of practice. And the patient would be non-transportable for at least another hour."

Akiban was already shaking her head. "Can that. It's a no-go. Sorry, Commander."

"I understand," Ktenge said solemnly.

"Huber?"

"First Squad is go," the gunnery chief reported. "Our bucket is ready."

Akiban brought up the colony schematics on her omni-tool again. "Here's how we'll do this. We'll drive around the eastern perimeter of the city and approach the dish along the foot of Mount Verne, that's this beauty right here." She pointed at the holo-display. "They'll see us coming from afar, but that can't be helped. I'd rather not cut through the colony and risk hard contact before we're even there.

"Unfortunately, we have no recon on possible enemy forces in the area whatsoever. If we encounter resistance, we'll take 'em out. Shoot first, ask questions later. Resetting the comm buoy has absolute priority."

Still sitting, Nakata embraced his knees with his arms. "What do we do if the comm buoy doesn't reset in spite of us sending the codes?"

Akiban took off her helmet and dropped it behind her back, massaging her scalp with a gloved hand. "That would suck, wouldn't it?" she said. "Let's hope it doesn't happen. If it does, we'll have to find a way to get off world ourselves. That would include the garrison fort, and that I'm not willing consider unless I absolutely have to. The comm buoy is our best hope now, so let's focus on that."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

"Commander, as the ranking officer, you'll remain in charge of the camp. Your primary objective will be to survive. I trust your judgment. If you have to strike camp and move or scatter, then do. Try not to engage the enemy. And make use of my non-coms. They know what they're doing and can advise you in all things ground operations."

Ktenge nodded.

"Morand, I'm leaving you in charge of the platoon. Give the commander a hand when she needs it."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

Akiban checked her watch. 0043. "We're leaving double-oh fifty. Questions? Good. Get moving!"


	4. Chapter 4

**IV**

Finding a path around the colony in the east had been easy up until the point when they reached the southern slopes of Mount Verne. Breaking westward toward the dish, Gilmore had to slow the Mako down, negotiating their way across the ragged terrain. The Mako was perfectly up to the task, but that did not make the ride any more bearable. Inside, the Marines were constantly exposed to high g-forces as the Mako flew, then fell and hit the ground, then climbed and jumped again. Nakata had taken the spare seat in One, making the port row of seats more crammed than usually, but under the circumstances it was an advantage because it allowed the Marines to jam their bodies against each other and thus minimize the effects of inertia in addition to what little the crash-webbings helped.

Holding her arm as steady as she could, Akiban was staring at her omni-tool which she had linked with the Mako's gun camera. The weapon was directed at the ever growing shape of the uplink dish as steadily as the terrain allowed. The target building itself was a low one-level bunker of about five hundred square meters with the twenty-meter dish sitting atop a thick strut.

"We definitely got sentries," Gilmore commed.

"I see them," Akiban replied. Four Marines were visible on the outside, wearing various iterations of Phoenix armor—the white and pink hardsuits were standard issue for garrisoned personnel that worked with civilians. They were easy to recognize and identify; mostly because no other army would coat its troopers in such ridiculous colors, the lieutenant thought.

"We're reaching weapon range," Gilmore reported.

Akiban knew what that meant. She had to make a decision now. The Marines at the dish were either hostile or they were not. If Akiban ordered a friendly approach, she risked giving them the opportunity to call for reinforcements. With an immediate attack she risked killing Marines who were on her side.

"Flag them as hostile and open fire," Akiban finally ordered.

"Aye, Lieutenant," Gilmore confirmed. The familiar sound of the Mako's machine gun and mass accelerator firing filled the infantry compartment.

"Show time!" Akiban shouted, making sure all of her Marines were awake. "Deployment formation: block. Switch to staggered line as soon as the bucket is on its way. Gilmore, take the bucket left as soon as we're out, infantry goes right. Neutralize anybody who's not inside this bucket right now. No heavy weapons on the dish. Nakata, support us with your tech attacks the best you can."

"OoRah!" the Marines shouted, activating the kinetic barriers of their armors, unstrapping from their seats.

Gilmore had already taken out several targets when she pulled to the right abruptly and stopped the vehicle. The boarding ramp went down and the Marines formed a compact block behind the tank, using it as cover against the still incoming fire.

"Huber! Fire Team Alpha takes point! Move!" Akiban barked.

"Go! Go! Go!" Huber shouted, pushing his Marines out of cover and toward the right flank.

"Bravo, go!" Akiban ordered, slapping Arden on the shoulder.

When the ramp was back up, Gilmore moved the Mako again and drove it to the left flank, still firing. Raising her rifle, Akiban began moving straight toward the dish. Her Marines had already taken out most of the resistance and she reached the bunker entrance without firing her weapon.

"Outside is clear," Huber reported as he joined Akiban at the entrance to the dish bunker. "We got one lightly wounded," he added, pointing at limping Alvarez who was leaning heavily on Vinne. "Several hits in the right thigh. Medi-gel is at work; she'll be fine."

"Enemy survivors?" Akiban asked.

"Two. Seven dead."

"Gilmore, how's it looking?" the lieutenant commed.

"We're clear for now."

"Copy that. Drive the bucket behind the dish structure, but make sure you can still see the city. Let us know if we're about to get company."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

"Akiban out." She pointed at the door. "Nakata, get us in there. Huber, get the bodies and prisoners. I want them inside, too. "

The chief walked up to the door while Miller's fire team lined up on both sides of it. He fired up his omni-tool and began bypassing the lock mechanism. Fire Team Bravo started gathering the wounded and the bodies.

Taking a look at Alvarez's shredded armor plates over her right leg, Akiban asked her, "How are you holding up, Marine?"

"It's gonna need some more medi-gel, Lieutenant, but I'll be fine."

"All right. Stay sharp."

"Door breached!" Nakata called and the door slowly opened. Matching the bunker fashion of the rest of the building, the door was double layered, the outer layer opening vertically while the inner layer opened horizontally.

Miller and Huber took the lead, moving inside. "Clear!" Huber soon called, confirming the sensor reading's results.

"Everybody inside!" Akiban ordered and helped drag the bodies of the neutralized enemy Marines into the bunker.

"Nakata, send the reset codes!" Akiban said, breathing heavily, after she had closed the door behind them.

"On it!" he confirmed, already sitting down at the main holo-interface.

Akiban turned to the two enemy survivors. They had been disarmed and their arms and legs had been tied. While both were wounded, their armors could administer medi-gel and rapidly heal their injuries, which still made them potentially dangerous. Their helmets had been removed.

"Rank, name, service number," the lieutenant demanded.

The two prisoners—one male, one female—glared at her but remained silent.

"Reset codes sent and reception confirmed," Akiban heard Nakata say. Now they just had to hold the position until the buoy came back up to send their report and distress call. That, however, could take up to half an hour because the buoy's systems first needed to fully reinitialize; then it had to reacquire position data and communication protocols from its peer buoys.

Akiban grabbed the female Marine in Phoenix armor by the hair—which was dark brown and tied to a bun at the back of her head—and stared her in the eyes from up close. "Rank, name, service number!" she shouted at her.

Again, silence was the only answer she received.

"Damn garrison rats," she muttered, using the derogatory term for personnel stationed in planetary garrison forts. Taking a deep breath, she released the woman, opened the collar of her armor, and tore out the dogtags. Then she did the same with those of the other prisoner.

"What have we here," Akiban said merely to herself, looking at the dogtags. "Private First Class Linda Faradan and Service Chief Daniel LeRose. I don't suppose either of you will tell me what the hell is going on here?"

Faradan smiled grimly. "You're so done, bitch."

Akiban's brow rose. "Life signs. That's new." She crossed her arms over her chestplate. "Attack on Marines, the destruction of an Alliance vessel and homicide of half its crew. I don't know what kind of freak-show you're pulling off here, but it won't last long."

"You'll see soon enough," LeRose spat.

"Of that I have no doubt," Akiban said. "Congratulations on not being vegetables."

Finally things were starting to work out. Akiban felt the tension that had been pressing down on her since the massacre at the administration building subside. Although evacuation was still several hours away at best, the situation was clearing up. Once the report was away, Akiban only needed to focus on keeping her platoon and the _North Cape _survivors alive. She was feeling much better now, though her head was beginning to ache again.

"Lieutenant, this is Gilmore."

"Go ahead," Akiban commed back.

"It looks like we're about to get company. One Grizzly and two Makos are coming our way from the garrison fort. ETA in about ten minutes."

"Shit." Akiban ran the numbers through her head. Three tanks, carrying up to twenty-eight infantry, including drivers, against her one bucket and ten deployed infantry. This wasn't going to end well.

"We've got inbound hostiles," she shouted. "A Grizzly and two Makos are coming in from the garrison fort. Check your equipment and make sure you're ready. Replenish medi-gel and ammunition at the bucket. You've got three minutes. When you're ready, meet me outside the front door. Haul it!"

The Marines got moving, hurrying outside. Akiban decided to engage the enemy in the open. Trying to defend from the inside would only limit their options of movement and place them in the middle of enemy crossfire with nowhere to go.

She stopped Nakata as he was on the way out. "Wait, Chief. We'll need your tech abilities in the fight. I need you to program a routine into the systems of the dish. Basically, I want it to send our distress call automatically as soon as the buoy checks in as online—just in case none of us are here to do it after this is over. And lock the doors once you're done. Lock them well."

"I understand," Nakata said, grasping the implication. Their chances of victory were infinitesimal. And surrender was not an option. He turned around and got to work.

After she stepped outside, Akiban surveyed the terrain. The dish bunker was situated atop a low elevation, maybe two meters above the level of the nearby street. About thirty meters away, the street itself formed a semicircle around on the colony-side of the dish with two-level habitats on the far side. Looking through her scope, Akiban spotted the enemy vehicles; they were approaching through the colony from the southwest. They would probably breach the line of buildings where a larger road connected with the circular one around the dish bunker.

When the Marines had replenished their supplies, they joined Akiban outside the entrance to the bunker. The lieutenant waited for the entire squad to assemble, using the time to finish her planning. She linked her suit's comms with One so Gilmore would hear everything, then spoke in a firm and confident voice: "Listen up! I don't care how many they are or how many buckets they bring. Those are just garrison rats whose only combat experience are the extranet reports. I won't be losing a single Marine to those green guys!"

"OoRah!" the Marines called.

"That's what I wanna hear! Now, our objective is clear. We'll hold this position and either neutralize the enemy or force them to retreat. There will be no surrender on our side. None of us will be taken prisoner! Have I made myself clear?"

"Ma'am, yes, ma'am!" the Marines replied in unison.

"Damn right," Akiban said contently. "Gilmore, you will be using the base of the dish bunker for cover. Move out, fire, take cover again. Your primary targets are the enemy vehicles—the more damage you can cause, the better."

"Aye, Lieutenant," Gilmore acknowledged over comms.

"Huber, you and Alpha will take the enemy head on. Find cover between the road and the dish."

"Aye, aye," Huber confirmed.

"Nakata, you'll take Bravo and Miles into those buildings across the street. The enemy will probably approach from over there"—Akiban pointed at the broadest road—"where they have the most space to maneuver. Don't sit right on top of them, or they'll see you on their proximity sensors and blow the buildings away and you right with them. Leave some room, one or maybe two buildings, so your life signs could pass as colonists and to deny them a direct firing solution. Don't engage until we've opened fire. That should give them enough to worry about so your attack comes as a surprise."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

"One more thing, Nakata," Akiban said. "Your tech abilities won't do us much good against the tanks, so hold back until they deploy their infantry, then give 'em hell! Their shields first, then their weapons."

"Wilco, LT."

"Questions?" Akiban asked.

Silence.

"You've got your orders. Semper Fidelis, Marines!"

"Semper Fidelis, ma'am!"

Fire Team Bravo with Nakata and Miles ran off toward the buildings while Huber started positioning his Marines. There were no objects to hide behind, but nothing as flimsy as a block of concrete or even something made of plastic would last long in the firefight. The only real protection was solid terrain, ideally meters of it, and the Marines' kinetic barriers. Huber ordered all of his Marines into a slight depression that interrupted the ascent of the hill toward the dish bunker. Vinne took the middle; like that the Medic had the shortest way to each trooper. Akiban placed herself on his left and Huber on his right. Finally, Miller took the far left flank and Alvarez the far right.

Akiban realized that they wouldn't last long against a full mechanized assault—but that wasn't Alpha's objective. All they had to do was make noise, supported by their Mako, and stop the enemy from approaching the dish directly. Once the enemy was bogged down, Fire Team Bravo could bring their weapons and Nakata's tech abilities to bear. Akiban speculated that the crossfire would put considerable stress on the approaching Marines, their combat infrastructure, and their chain of command. That, in turn, could provoke mistakes, even panic. Much of her plan hinged on Gilmore's performance, though. The enemy's most important resource was still their vehicles. Their 155-millimeter mass accelerators and lower caliber machine guns could tear through Akiban's infantry regardless of cover, and the Marines simply didn't carry any anti-vehicle equipment. Connor's grenade launcher was their heaviest man-portable weapon, but it was designed to fight infantry and had no armor penetration capabilities at all.

Akiban squeezed her left hand below her visor and massaged her forehead. Her headache was definitely back. Who would have thought that they would need rocket launchers on such a mission? It seemed like a bad joke.

"Lieutenant, Nakata. We're in position."

"Copy that, Chief. Good hunting."

"Aye. Nakata out."

"They're in position," Akiban called in Huber's direction. He was about ten meters away from her, only Vinne halfway between them.

His response was only a grim nod.

Taking a deep breath, Akiban pressed her eyes shut. The glum mood was understandable. The mission had been a mess since they had entered the system, and now they were looking at an ignominious end. The fact that they would at least go down fighting offered little solace. Looking to her left, Akiban could see Miller facing the ground as she lay there, praying. On her right, Vinne was quiet, adjusting something on his rifle. Huber was staring ahead where he was expecting the enemy to appear, his gaze empty. She couldn't see Alvarez behind the Marines on her right.

Ultimately, Akiban noticed the lack of starlight. The only illumination was the light coming from the buildings, the streetlights, and from the floodlights around the dish. She looked up and saw only darkness. Then she witnessed a single raindrop tickling down her visor and dropping on her lower lip. Almost frantically, she wiped it away, afraid that the rain might contain the substance that had driven the colonists crazy.

"Don't drink the rainwater," she muttered when she realized that her rapid movement had drawn glances from the Marines around her.

Minutes later, Akiban could finally hear the enemy vehicles approaching. It was raining and the sound of the three tanks could barely be heard over the water clattering on the ground, softening it as it turned the dust into mud.

"All hands, get ready," Akiban commed.

Only Nakata's confirmation came. Gilmore was already on the move as the first enemy Mako appeared between the buildings, exactly where Akiban had predicted. One's mass accelerator boomed and found purchase, scoring a direct hit on the hostile vehicle. The slug smashed into the Mako's nose, stopping it dead in its tracks as its kinetic barriers flickered out of existence. It hadn't advanced far enough to be able to return fire, and that was its undoing. Gilmore fired again as soon as her weapon allowed it. Her second slug deformed the other Mako's front, lifting it off its front pair of wheels and heaving it laterally, just short of flipping it over.

The Grizzly with its lower profile made use of the situation and positioned itself behind the destroyed Mako. It fired over the wrecked bow of the other tank. The slug cut the air above Akiban and struck something behind her. The impact was followed by wrenching sounds.

She was still alive. That counted. "Fire!" she shouted.

Gilmore probably had no firing solution on the Grizzly from her position, but Akiban and the Marines around her had. Their weapons couldn't harm the Grizzly substantially, but sustained fire would force it to move because every missing percentage of shield strength could prove fatal in the later engagement with One. Firing bursts from their assault rifles, the Marines began riddling the front of the Grizzly with projectiles.

Choosing the bold option, the Grizzly advanced into the open and fired its accelerator again as it moved. Again, the slug struck something behind Akiban. Ignoring the shockwave from the impact, she kept firing.

A slug hit the Grizzly, but the heavy IFV[1] kept moving, and the second enemy Mako followed suit. Both enemy vehicles fired, causing gut-wrenching shockwaves to wash over the Marines. A volley of grenades rained down on the Grizzly from the far side of the street, hitting it laterally. The grenades caused little damage to the vehicle but strained its kinetic barriers. Another slug from One sealed the heavier vehicle's fate, breaking through its weakened shields and punching through its bow armor. The Grizzly was lifted in the air and began rolling back down the hill after its wheels made contact with the ground again.

Yet another slug cut the air and rain above Akiban's head. This time the impact was followed by a secondary explosion behind her, shrapnel showering her and weakening her shields. She slid back and down into the depression and turned around. One was visible from behind the dish building. There was a gaping hole in its lower left bow, and the hull was torn from the turret backward as the result of an internal explosion. Even worse, the enemy had apparently targeted the dish. The metal construction now lay collapsed at the foot of the bunker.

Akiban opened her mouth to unleash a curse, but her words never crossed her lips. She could only tell that she was deafened, and that she was in the air, shields dead. Hitting the ground after several meters of flight, Akiban had no idea where she was or what had happened. She tried to orient herself, instinctively looking for some sort of cover, but her ears and eyes and lungs—and everything else for that matter—burned with a paralyzing agony. Tasting iron in her mouth and feeling something warm running out of her nose, she activated the medi-gel injection system of her armor. The pain subsided, but the dizziness remained.

Still lying sprawled on the ground, she could hear screams, weapon fire, and a loud buzzing in her ears that almost drowned out all other noise. Realizing that there was still a battle going on, Akiban felt for her rifle, but it wasn't there. She looked up and readied her sidearm.

Flashes of weapon fire were visible in the windows across the street. Looking right, Akiban saw that she was at least twenty meters from her previous position. At least one assault rifle was still firing from somewhere over there, but no shapes were visible in the dark. There was nobody on her left.

Akiban crawled to the crest of the depression and saw the enemy Mako turning its turret to her right. It opened fire with its machine gun, and the assault rifle bursts Akiban had heard before subsided. Then the turret began swinging in her direction. Heart pounding, Akiban pushed herself back into the depression and into cover, hopefully out of the gunner's field of view. Only the power of desperation still let her muscles contract. She knew she was done. She knew it was over. One was destroyed, Alpha probably wiped out, and Bravo engaged with enemy infantry from the looks of it. She exhaled. At least the mass accelerator would make it quick.

To her surprise, the accelerator didn't fire. Instead, the distinctive smoke trail of a combustion-propelled projectile appeared above her head, followed by a deafening explosion. Then a second one. Then a third.

Miraculously still alive, Akiban risked a brief glance over the crest. The enemy Mako had two smoking holes in its left flank, and its gun turret was motionless, aimed at something to her left and behind her. She wiped the mud that had splattered over her visor away and rolled over to lie on her back. Her head throbbed and her limbs ached, but she was alive. Over her heavy breathing she could still hear the screams, now on her left, but the weapon fire from across the street seemed to have subsided.

Ignoring the pain, Akiban dragged herself to her feet and stumbled in the direction of the screams. Through the pouring rain she recognized the shapes of two Marines. Miller was leaning over Vinne. The medic was missing his right arm from the shoulder and his right leg from the knee downward. His gaze was glazed from the massive dose of medi-gel his armor had fired into his body to kill the pain and to close the wounds. Miller was breathing heavily, her eyes torn wide opened, her rifle on the ground next to her, her mouth agape.

"Sitrep," Akiban managed, dropping to her knees next to Miller.

The corporal sobbed, almost convulsed, and shook her head. "Alvarez is dead," she finally said. "I don't know where Huber is. I think I saw an arm somewhere. I think it was an arm."

The rain was pouring down now, as icy as the air. It was washing away the smell of blood and burnt flesh.

Akiban looked down at Vinne. His breathing was shallow, and his eyes gazed emptily into the nothingness of the night sky. "Are you all right, Miller?"

The corporal looked at her left arm. A chunk was torn out of her armor. The remains of a nasty gash were still visible on her left triceps. Medi-gel had stopped the bleeding and closed the wound. "I'm fine."

Akiban nodded, almost gagging, and staggered to her feet. She reached for Miller's rifle and pressed the weapon against the corporal's chest, waiting for the woman to grab it. "This isn't over yet, Marine."

With shaky hands Miller clutched the rifle to her body. "Yes, Lieutenant."

"Stay here and guard Vinne."

"Aye."

Her sidearm still firmly in her right hand, Akiban started walking along the depression, fighting nausea. Head still spinning from the near mass accelerator impact, she almost tripped when she reached the crater where the slug had torn the ground open.

"Nakata, this is Akiban," she commed.

"Go ahead, Lieutenant," Nakata replied. His voice was tense, but at least he was still alive.

Looking at the ground as she stumbled ahead, Akiban saw something that looked like a forearm. Could be Vinne's, she thought, but upon closer inspection she realized that there was a left hand at its end, the limb torn off below the elbow by sheer force. Nausea got the better of her and she vomited, leaning forward, hands resting on her knees.

"Lieutenant, are you okay?" Nakata's voice.

She coughed. "Sure." She felt like shit. "Sitrep, Chief."

"Enemy infantry is neutralized. We've got three prisoners. Two of us wounded, one of them incap."

"I need a"—she stopped, coughing again—"I need a medic over here."

"Copy that, ma'am, we're on our way."

"Akiban out." She didn't find any more of Huber's body, but she found Alvarez's. The woman lay sprawled on her back, limbs stretched away from her torso, her right hand still holding on to the pistol grip of her assault rifle. Akiban scanned the body with her omni-tool—it confirmed her death. Alvarez lay in a pool of her own blood; her armor was shattered in several places from her chest upward. The trail of impacts continued up the collar and further up to the mouth where a projectile had hit her below the nose. There were further hits: One of them had split her visor and torn through her right eye, another had cracked her helmet just above the brow, and the last was just a grazing hit on the top right. In spite of the rain, the smell of medi-gel was heavy in the air, but the wounds had been too heavy for the armor's emergency injection to save Alvarez's life.

Akiban dropped to her knees. Her hands moved clumsily, motor neurons responding sluggishly, forcing her to pay extra attention to even simple tasks such as closing Alvarez's mouth and left eye. Akiban unsealed the dead Marine's helmet, opened her collar, and ripped the dogtags from her neck. After storing them in a pouch on her equipment belt, Akiban reached for Alvarez's rifle and checked it for damage. It was intact and operational. She holstered the weapon on her back.

Intellectually, she knew that she needed to keep going. She had to look confident. She had to inspire confidence in her Marines. Right now, every part of her body screamed in agony with every move she made. Pain shot through every muscle that contracted, her lungs ached with every breath she drew, her ears throbbed with the sound of every raindrop that hit the ground, and her stomach felt as if it was about to digest itself. The medi-gel had stopped the bleeding, but because of the humid air and the rain it just refused to dry. Trying to wipe the blood from her mouth she only succeeded in smearing it all over her face.

She fired a small dose of medi-gel into her body and dropped on her buttocks. Most of the pain subsided, but the headache wouldn't go away. Swearing, Akiban looked around and saw the burning remains of One at the edge of the dish bunker. She moaned and dragged herself to her feet and up the hill all the way to wreckage.

There was a gaping hole in the bow of the Mako and the infantry compartment was deformed and still on fire. Akiban tried to open the driver access hatch, but it was distorted along the rest of the port armor and wouldn't budge. She dragged herself along the flank of the vehicle and to the boarding ramp. On the left side of the ramp was a small flap that, after Akiban pried it open with her knife, revealed a small keypad. The lieutenant punched in the four-digit code to open the ramp, and it fell open as the seals released it. The smell of burned plastic and melted steel struck Akiban like a wall. She reeled back, recognizing another note of the smell: burned flesh. She vomited where she stood; what little still had been in her stomach splattered all over the boarding ramp. She moaned in disgust and collapsed against the back armor of the Mako. Breathing only through her mouth, Akiban forced herself inside the tank and dragged herself through the infantry compartment and to the driver seat in the front. All she found there was Gilmore's charred body. The private was still strapped into her seat, hands on the controls. Akiban leaned over Gilmore's shoulder, now seeing that the deformed slug from an enemy mass accelerator was stuck in her abdomen. The lieutenant hoped that the slug had killed Gilmore before the fire had roasted her. She confirmed the private's death with her omni-tool and took her dogtags. She let herself drop into foremost seat on the left side.

"Lieutenant!" she heard somebody shout.

"I'm here!" she called. Pretend to know what you're doing, even if you've got no clue, she thought.

Nakata's armored shape appeared at the boarding ramp. His hardsuit was damaged, but he didn't make the impression of being wounded. Next to his shotgun there was also a grenade launcher attached to his back. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine," she lied. "What's your status?"

Nakata dropped into the squad leader's seat next to the ramp on the right, grimacing at the smell that assaulted his nostrils. "Connor got hit pretty bad when they started throwing grenades at us. I took over the 'nade launcher. She'll live but is incap. Arden took a few rounds to his right arm. He'll be all right once the medi-gel is done with him."

Akiban craned her head back until the back of her helmet came to rest against the Mako's sidewall. "Huber, Alvarez, and Gilmore bought it. Vinne is incap, lost and arm and a leg. The bucket is scrap."

Nakata took a deep breath. "What now, LT?"

Akiban shook her head. "Make sure everybody recharges their medi-gel and stocks up on water and rations. We need to get moving soon."

"Where to?" The voice came from nearby, but she didn't recognize it.

Akiban immediately reached for her sidearm and stared at the empty seat ahead of her, eyes wide. "What the hell?"

The air flickered in front of her, and an armored shape appeared sitting in the seat Akiban was staring at, relaxed and looking straight back. Nakata was already aiming his own sidearm at the stranger in blue and white armor. It was a turian.

"Who the fuck are you?" Akiban demanded.

The turian, an HMWSR sniper rifle and a rocket launcher holstered on his back, took off his helmet, revealing a dark gray face with white markings on it.

"A turian? Here?" Akiban asked slowly.

"Raman Varelius, Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance. At your service."

Akiban laughed out. "A Spectre no less." She inspected him from top to bottom. "You took out the second Mako," she concluded.

"Indeed," the turian confirmed. "Your people put up a good fight, uh..."

"Lieutenant Akiban, Seventh Frontier Division, Tenth Infantry. This is my platoon non-com, Operations Chief Nakata."

"...Lieutenant."

"I take it you're not one of them?" Akiban asked.

"Fortunately not, no," the turian confirmed, and Nakata lowered his weapon. The chief's wary glance remained on the Spectre.

"And, by pure chance, you don't happen to know what's going on here?" she inquired.

"I have a hypothesis," Varelius offered. "But this is neither the place nor the time to discuss it. Enemy reinforcements could already be on their way. We need to retreat into the city and hide."

"Yeah, of course," Akiban muttered. 0103 on her watch. "You've got your orders, Nakata. We're moving out in five minutes."

"Aye, aye," the chief said skeptically and left.

Still breathing only through her mouth, Akiban moved two seats to her right and used the Mako's medi-gel and water stores to replenish her own. She grabbed a ration bar, also from the Mako's stores, and left the tank. Standing outside, she finally dared to breathe through her nose again and began unwrapping the ration.

"I have a safe house about two kilometers from here," Varelius said. "If you can make it there without drawing attention, we should be safe from patrols until things have settled down."

The lieutenant wolfed down the ration and regretted it immediately, having to fight not to vomit again. She coughed and nodded. "Give me the coordinates."

The turian activated his omni-tool and transmitted the position data to Akiban. She double-checked the coordinates on her own omni-tool and looked over to the other side of the dish bunker. Miller and Miles deposited Vinne at the wall. Connor was on her feet again, but her armor was visibly damaged at the left hip and thigh, and she was favoring her left leg.

"You should leave the dead and the wounded here," Varelius suggested so only Akiban could hear him as the first Marines moved to the Mako to resupply.

"We'll leave the dead, not the wounded," Akiban said without looking at him.

"If you're seen in the city, you might pass as Marines from the fort. With the wounded, though, they will wonder why you've not called for medevac or why you're not headed for the hospital. You're risking to compromise my safe house." The turian spoke calmly in a matter-of-fact tone.

"Tough luck," Akiban responded. She scowled, more at herself than anyone else. She felt her earlier argument with Ktenge oddly reversed. As a Spectre, Varelius would always put the mission first. For him the Marines were only assets; the wounded were already expended. Akiban was responsible for the men and women under her command, though, just as Ktenge was for those under hers.

The turian's lizard-like mask betrayed nothing. "You will divert from the coordinates if you're followed. I'll give you my comm protocols. Like that we can communicate without the garrison fort listening in."

"Okay," Akiban agreed and absent-mindedly downloaded the new encryption to her omni-tool, then redistributed it to 1st Squad. The rain had stopped, but it was still freezing. Breath condensed at the mouths of the Marines. While their hardsuits kept them warm, their faces were numb and aching from the cold.

"We're ready to move," Nakata reported, white clouds manifesting at his face.

"Let's get going."

"Aye, Lieutenant."

Varelius put his helmet back on and sealed his armor. "I'll see you at the hideout." With that he activated his camouflage system and vanished where he had stood; only the tracks his armored feet pressed into the wet ground indicated his presence.

"It'll get colder before it'll get warmer," Nakata warned. "All this water will freeze and turn the roads into an ice rink. We need to get out of here before that happens. Frozen ground will only obstruct movement and make carrying Vinne a pain."

"I'm more worried about the response this will provoke," she said and checked her weapons. The rifle was Alvarez's. Alvarez was dead. "Even ground-side sensors will have picked up this firefight," she continued. "Sooner or later they'll realize that their patrol isn't coming back. Somebody will investigate. I don't want to be within proximity sensor range by then."

Walking over to the back of the dish where the other Marines had gathered, Akiban and Nakata mobilized them, helping those sitting to their feet.

"Listen up!" Akiban called. "From now on we're only using the new encryption. That will allow us to broadcast beyond the range of point-to-point comms.

"Connor, can you walk?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," the woman replied. The smell of medi-gel lay in the air.

"Good. Miller, McKenzie, you are carrying Vinne. Miles, you take point and scout ahead. It's unlikely that there will be many people out here, but I don't want to draw any more attention to us than absolutely necessary. We're headed for the turian's hideout. Nakata, you're with me."

"At least the streets are empty," Nakata commented, taking another glance over his shoulder; he and Akiban formed the rearguard of the group of Marines that passed stealthily through the city.

Akiban remained silent.

"Do you trust him?" Nakata asked several meters later.

"The turian?"

"Yeah."

"He's a Spectre. Of course I don't trust him," she said and sounded annoyed even though she was trying not to. "He's got his own agenda here, and he's not helping us out the kindness of his heart. Turians, pah. He'll sacrifice every single one of us if he thinks it serves his purpose."

"That's what I thought," Nakata muttered.

Why the turian was on Balance Point was anyone's guess. Akiban wasn't sure how Spectres operated, but she knew that they stood above the law and were allowed to do pretty much anything to achieve their objectives. That didn't only give him operational leverage over the Marines; it also meant that he couldn't be trusted. Yet Akiban wanted to make use of him and his resources to complete her own mission. This was about to get political, she realized. She hated politics.

"We have to prevent him from manipulating us. Or we have to manipulate him in return. I'm sure he knows more about what's going on here than he'll say, assuming he'll say anything. I want to get more out of him without revealing too much about our own plans."

Akiban thought that a straightforward cooperation with the Spectre would probably yield the best results, but shedding that sort of naïveté had been part of OCS[2]. She had fond memories of those times. While she couldn't hold the turian's reservations against him, she needed to protect the interests of the Alliance and of her Marines against an agenda in which they were secondary at best, contrary at worst. What annoyed her most was that her only bargaining chip was the manpower of her Marines, the value of which had first to be determined under these strange circumstances. Further, as a Spectre, Varelius would not be prosecuted for anything he did here, whereas Akiban was still struggling with an unfamiliar and confusing set of rules of engagement and mission parameters. She had already ordered and done the otherwise unthinkable. The fate of her and her Marines in the wake of a court-martial nagged at her persistently while bodies of colonists probably still littered the ground outside the administration building.

At least her headache was getting better again.

* * *

[1] IFV: Infantry Fighting Vehicle

[2] OCS: Officer Candidate School


	5. Chapter 5

**V**

"You weren't followed?" Varelius asked suspiciously. He had arrived at the small house in Balance Point's suburb south-south-east of the dish long before the Marines, who were burdened with carrying their wounded.

Akiban pulled her helmet from her head and let it dangle down her back. "No. It's like a ghost town out there. I don't think anyone even saw us."

"Not sure if that's good or bad," he said, eying her skeptically.

"How did you get this place?" Nakata asked, massaging his face to return some feeling to it.

"I rented it for temporary residence under a false identity. Officially, this house is inhabited by a certain Patryk Orel from Earth, technical inspector on a business trip," the turian replied, failing to hide the smugness from his voice.

Akiban nodded and looked around. The place was modestly furnished, with no personal items in sight. McKenzie had put Vinne down on a beige couch and was tending to his wounds while the other Marines had dropped onto various pieces of furniture or on the ground, enjoying the warmth of the heated habitat. Construction-wise, the building was not a repurposed part of a ship but a second-wave one-family home. The lieutenant suspected that Varelius had rented the house as part of his operational preparations, from which she deduced that he must have known that his mission—whatever it was—would be neither easy nor short. She wondered what other resources the turian had up his sleeve.

"All right. All nice and cozy. So, what the hell is going on here?" Akiban asked, deciding to cut the civilities.

The turian's mandibles twitched, and for a moment he sought for an unoccupied piece of furniture. Finding none, he faced Akiban standing and said, "I'm afraid this is Spectre business. Pretty much everything you've seen is classified. You shouldn't even be here."

Akiban snorted a laugh. Interesting gambit, she thought. "Let's cut the secret service classified top-secret crap, shall we?"

"Don't take me wrong, Lieutenant," Varelius said. "I'm not unhappy about your arrival. I'm sure that we can salvage this situation in a joint effort. Of course your Marines aren't trained for something like this, but you can put other qualities to good use."

"Sweet," Akiban said.

The turian produced what Akiban decided was an amused sound as Nakata took up position next to her.

"I should probably start with why I'm here," Varelius offered.

"Please do," the lieutenant said, crossing her arms in front of her chest.

"I was sent here by the Council to investigate the discovery of what we believe is a Prothean artifact. It was found during the mining operations here on Parrin IV near the Balance Point colony."

Akiban wondered if Captain Cooper knew of any of this—or if any of his superiors did. She said nothing.

"I arrived here under false name in the guise of a businessman looking for opportunities to trade resources for an independent company. I located the device in the mining facility which was the base of the operation in which it was found. At that time, the device was dormant. Everything seemed normal. I installed my surveillance equipment and took my scans. Then I delivered my initial report to the Council."

Exhaling forcibly, Akiban managed to keep her facial expression rigid. She would have loved to know why the Council was spying on an Alliance world. While she guessed at the enormous importance of Prothean everything, she considered the presence of a Spectre a serious breach of trust. Unless, of course, the Spectre was here with the Alliance's consent, and she was the one who had been left in the dark. All of this threatened to make her headache get worse again.

"Prothean artifacts don't turn people into homicidal maniacs who help husks attack Marines," she finally said.

Mandibles twitching, Varelius chuckled. "No, they don't—at least none that we know of. And that is, of sorts, the core of the problem here, isn't it? It's not a Prothean artifact. Actually, I suspect that we're dealing with some sort of geth technology."

"The husks were kind of a giveaway," Nakata commented sourly.

"Indeed," the turian agreed and turned toward a cabinet from which he produced something that probably passed for the turian equivalent of preserved food.

"We didn't see any dragon's teeth on our way in," Akiban pointed out.

"No, you didn't," Varelius said. "Neither did I. Yet there are husks." He started eating; it didn't look appetizing to the humans.

"You said the device was dormant when it was found," Akiban stated.

"It was," he confirmed. "Until it was activated, that is. Shortly thereafter, strange things began to happen in the colony. First, the device was moved from the mining facility to the garrison fort under heavy escort. Then the local VI was cut from the system, and then the Parrin FTL comm buoy went unresponsive."

"Wait," Nakata said. "The device was activated? As in 'intentionally activated'?"

"I have gathered evidence that the device was manipulated from the outside, yes." The turian bit off another mouthful, chewed, and swallowed. "I don't know who did it or why. What is certain, though, is that the device didn't activate itself."

"Great." Akiban scratched her head violently with her right hand.

"So it's this device that's driving the people crazy?" Nakata inquired.

"The evidence is circumstantial," the turian replied, producing what appeared to be a shrug. "In the face of a lack of another explanation, my credits are on this option, though."

"I see," Akiban said, wondering what it was that he wasn't telling them. She turned to her left and looked across the living room to the couch where Vinne was lying. "How is he, McKenzie?"

The medic was slumped on the ground, leaning with his back against the couch where his patient lay. Marines were trained to operate for extended periods of time under great stress with very little rest—in theory. Recent events had taken their toll on the troop's condition, though, both mental and physical. "He'll live," he offered. "Bleeding's stopped and he's stable. I'm keeping him asleep for now."

"Okay." Akiban accepted this for now.

Varelius finished his meal. "I take it that you managed to send the reset codes to the comm buoy?"

"We did," Akiban confirmed. "But the enemy destroyed the dish before we could send our distress call."

"Unfortunate," the turian purred.

Akiban took a long draw from her water supply. "Our objective remains the same," she said. "We need to reestablish communications with Operations Command and inform them of what's happening here."

"Yes, you should do that," Varelius agreed tentatively. "Until then, stealth is our best bet."

Ignoring him, Akiban went on, "We also need to get back in touch with Ktenge and the rest of the platoon. If we can relay the new encryption protocols to them, we can communicate with them freely."

"Where are they?" Varelius asked.

"A few kilometers outside the colony in a lightly fortified camp."

"I must advise against that. Anything that draws attention to our current whereabouts is a risk to be avoided."

Akiban smiled grimly. "That it is. Nakata, how far are we from the camp?"

The chief checked his omni-tool. "I'd say about nineteen kilometers."

"Too far to send somebody alone on foot," she concluded. "Hijack one of those aircars, then. Walk a bit so it doesn't give us away, steal it, and get somebody to the camp. They can implement the new encryption and report in to us."

Nakata nodded.

"Miles?" Akiban called.

"Lieutenant," the sniper acknowledged, joining her and the chief.

"You and the chief will steal an aircar. You'll deliver the new encryption protocols to the camp and have it check in with us." Akiban put a hand on the private's shoulder. "Those protocols must not fall into enemy hands. Do you understand?"

"Yes, Lieutenant," Miles confirmed.

"Nakata, you'll come back here once Miles is on her way. Private, once you've delivered the codes, you'll get everybody you can fit into that aircar and get them back here. We need to compensate for our losses. Drop the vehicle a kilometer or so from here and cover the rest on foot on your way back. Make sure you're not seen on the final approach and try to make it back here before sunrise."

"Understood," Miles said.

"Questions?"

Silence.

"Move out."

"What do you plan on doing once you've established contact and replenished your numbers?" Varelius asked patiently.

Akiban pondered this for a moment. With the colony's uplink dish gone, the only way to access the comm buoy was from the garrison fort. That didn't bode well.

"The garrison fort," she said.

"Yes, the garrison fort," he confirmed.

Akiban knew that a frontal attack on the base was out of the question. Even if they could bypass the defensive emplacements like turrets, walls, and kinetic barriers, the Marines stationed there still massively outnumbered Akiban's unit, not to mention their mechanized forces.

Thinking, she pressed thumb and index finger of her right hand against her brow right above her nose.

"Headache?" the turian asked.

"Don't worry, it's getting better," she muttered, rubbing her eyes.

"Mhm," he made. "The headache is a good sign. It means your body is fighting the changes."

It took Akiban a moment to grasp the implication. "Wait a second. You mean what happened to the colonists is about to happen to me and to my Marines?"

"It's happening to everyone," the turian said nonchalantly.

"Irreversibly?"

"I don't know," he admitted. "This has been encountered before, but we still understand only very little about what actually happens."

"Where?" Akiban asked.

"Classified. All I can tell you is that the effect gets worse the closer you are to the device. You've probably noticed that the closer you are to the fort, the worse the headache gets."

She thought about this for a moment and her memory confirmed it. "So we'll just suddenly snap and be on their side?"

"Unlikely," Varelius said. "Further symptoms are nausea and a confused memory."

She shook her head. "Great. That means once we've infiltrated the base, our heads will be bursting, we'll be puking our guts out, and our memories will be playing tricks on us. Worst plan ever."

"Speed will be of the essence," he said.

"What if we destroy the device?" Akiban suggested. "That should cease the immediate effects on us, and maybe everybody else will return to normal."

"I wouldn't count on the latter, but it's possible, yes."

"You've seen and scanned that thing. What would it take to make it go away?"

Varelius looked at her and for the first time appeared thoughtful, considering her question. "I understand its inner workings about as much as you do. I suppose that if we cause enough internal damage, the device will at least shut down, even if we fail to destroy it completely. We'll have to get through its hull for that. It's made of an alloy I've never seen before, but I think that a few well-placed explosives should do the trick."

"You should double-check your readings and make sure we know what we need," Akiban proposed.

"A reasonable suggestion," the turian said and turned away to leave the room.

Interesting, she thought. In spite of his turian pride, the Spectre would follow the suggestion of a human. She doubted he would listen to her when his true objective was at stake; maybe he had only granted her this small victory to lull her into a false sense of command. She would keep an eye on him.

The door to the house opened and Nakata slipped inside, shutting it behind him immediately. Akiban relaxed and lowered her right hand, which had instinctively twitched to her sidearm.

"She's on her way," Nakata reported and took off his helmet. "Nice little limousine, five seats and a trunk big enough to ferry back some equipment."

"Good," Akiban said and waved him closer.

He walked over to where she stood, fumbling with the wrap of field ration bar.

"Here's what I got out of our turian friend," Akiban said in a low voice, turning her back on the rest of the room. "Apparently, some sort of geth device was discovered during the local mining operations. Somebody thought it was a good idea to activate it—that's when things started going crazy."

Nakata bit a piece off his ration bar and scowled. "You plan on taking out the device."

She grimaced. "I hope I'm not as transparent to everybody else as I am to you."

"Hey, what kind of platoon non-com would I be if I couldn't read your mind, Lieutenant?"

"A less creepy one," she said. "Anyway, I don't trust him any farther than I can throw him. Maybe he's going to help us, maybe not. Regardless, I want to be ready. At some point we'll have to infiltrate the garrison fort—yeah, don't say it—if we want to get a message off world. Our second objective will be to destroy the device, or at least knock it out. I want you to save your grenades. We aren't carrying any other explosives, and I don't want to end up standing in front of the thing unable to scratch it."

"I understand."

"Another thing," Akiban added. Her voice went so low that Nakata had to lean closer to her. "We seem to have been influenced by this technology already. Remember the headaches? Varelius said that's some sort of immune reaction of the body defending itself. From there on it just gets worse: nausea, memory leaks, flexible loyalty; you get the idea."

"Yeah."

"Look, I know it looks like anything involving the fort sounds like a one-way trip; and that's exactly what it's gonna turn into if we end up shooting each other in the back. The odds are bad enough without our people switching sides."

"Can we stop it?"

"I don't know. If he knows, he's not told me."

"Well, if our turian friend here was in the city when everybody else went crazy, why is he still normal?"

Akiban sighed. "Maybe it doesn't affect turians the same way it does humans, or maybe he's luring us into a trap. Who knows."

"My headache's almost gone. That means the closer we're to the thing the stronger the effect?"

"Yes," Akiban confirmed. "I don't know what things will be like in the fort, but I'm sure it'll be bad. I can't even tell how long we'll be able to operate there before we're incap. What counts is this: We have to be fast, and we have to keep our own backs clear, even from our own people."

"Are you sure he isn't just trying to seed distrust between us?" Nakata asked.

"I'm not sure about anything," Akiban replied. "I'd rather be paranoid than dead. I want you to make sure that everybody stays sharp without making our own people fear each other. It's more than enough paranoia with the two of us knowing, and the platoon must remain operational for as long as possible."

"Aye, aye."

"You've never disappointed me, Chief. See to it that you keep it up," Akiban said and put a hand on his armored shoulder.

His black eyes stared back at her intensely. He nodded.

Akiban nodded back and gave him a clap on the shoulder guard. She trusted him completely. While he tended to speak about things a bit too lightly for her taste, he functioned like a clockwork in action. Her platoon would be a mess without him.

Rapid movement in the room behind Nakata drew her attention. Miller had fallen asleep in an armchair and was now moaning and thrashing violently. Akiban hurried past the chief and leaned over the corporal, grabbing her shoulders.

"Miller!" Akiban called and shook the woman. "Snap out of it, Miller!"

The fire team leader continued to thrash around for a few more seconds, then she woke up, breathing heavily, her eyes wide.

Stirred up by the commotion, McKenzie woke up from half-sleep at Vinne's side and hurried to assist Akiban. "Let me," the medic said, almost shoving the lieutenant aside but still allowing her to hold Miller down.

"I'm fine!" Miller breathed and pushed McKenzie away before he could run a medical scan. "I'm fine."

"Bad dream?" Akiban asked, shaking her head and backing away.

"Fucking real," Miller muttered.

McKenzie ran his scan anyway. "Massive stress reaction," he commented. Marines were tested for sleeping disorders before training. Although the stress of combat could provoke all sorts of reactions, this was extreme by any standard.

"The influence of the device, perhaps," Varelius suggested as he returned from an adjacent room.

"Maybe," Akiban allowed.

"I suggest nobody sleeps longer than ten minutes in a row," Varelius said. "That should limit the amount of influence the device has on you."

Akiban would have preferred her unit rested before taking on the fort, but they wouldn't do her much good with their minds torn apart by nightmares horrific enough make a trained Marine tremble. She checked her watch, but its transparent cover was cracked and the internal mechanisms broken. Still, they had been deployed only for a few hours. While such conditions were more taxing than a regular sleep and wake cycle, Akiban expected that they should be able to keep going. How it would end, though, she could not say.

Keeping her concerns to herself she just nodded. "See to it, McKenzie. Ten minutes."

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"I went over my data again, and I think that we'll need more punch to crack the shell of the device than I originally assumed," Varelius announced.

"How much?" the lieutenant asked, turning to face him.

"More than your anti-infantry weaponry," the turian stated. "Luckily, I might have just what we need."

"And what would that be?" Akiban asked when he showed no inclination to continue.

Varelius extended his arm and used his omni-tool to project the three-dimensional image of an oval object into the air. "My own invention: a mass effect bomb. Once it's triggered, it generates a rapidly expanding mass effect field that tears everything apart within a maximum radius of twenty meters. Anything that's not protected by barriers is subject to the field's warping of space. I wouldn't rely on your hardsuit's shields, though. You really don't want to be anywhere near it when it goes off—lots of shrapnel.

"If we decide to use them, I suggest we place them in a square pattern around the device to ensure maximum effect. The overlapping fields should be enough to pull the thing to bits."

"Sounds good," Akiban said. "How big are those things and how much do they weigh?"

"About thirty centimeters, roughly nine kilograms."

She took a deep breath. "That's quite a bit of weight to carry around. We'll be moving slower with those. How many do you have?"

"Eleven," Varelius said. "What do you have in mind?"

"Four for the device should leave us with..." She pressed the palm of her right hand against her forehead. "...seven spares. Now, I don't intend to carry out a frontal assault on that fort, but those things could come in handy as a distraction."

"Transportation issues aside, yes, why not," Varelius said. "A distraction sounds like a good idea. From what I know of the device's effects, it makes its victims unable to respond creatively and restricts them to instinctive reaction. The more they're affected the more that is the case; husks are the extreme form of this, though that process of transformation is more invasive."

"Sweet," Akiban said, not bothering to ask why the turian hadn't told her earlier or how he knew it. Her suspicion that he would keep all information to himself until it was immediately relevant had just confirmed itself; he was keeping her on a need-to-know leash, and she intended to do the same with him.

"Lieutenant, this is Miles."

"Go ahead, Miles," Akiban commed back.

"Uh, Lieutenant, we've got enemy presence at the camp."

Akiban swore under her breath, craning her back to look at the ceiling.

"I repeat, we've got enemy presence at the camp. Please acknowledge."

"Acknowledged," Akiban finally replied. "Please specify 'enemy presence.'"

"Uh, I'm barely within visual range, but I can see lights, people, and husks. No vehicles and no sign of our people. I can't tell if there was a fight."

"Have you been spotted?"

There was a paused. "I don't think so. I stopped when I saw the lights 'cause I didn't think our people would give themselves away like that. I went to take a closer look and saw the enemy all over the place."

"Good thinking." Akiban was glad that Miles had recovered after her blackout at the administration building. It had been a good decision to send her, she thought—one of few. "You said there's no sign of our people?"

"Negative, Lieutenant. I think I can see the wreckage of Two, but there's no sign of Four or any of the personnel."

"Right. Nakata, you got that?"

The chief nodded. He had linked his own comm systems into the transmission.

"All right. We're still gonna need the reinforcements. It's not even, what, an hour since we've left. Our people can't be far. Miles, I want you to conduct a twenty kilometer sweep on the side of the camp that's away from the colony. Get a medic, a sniper, and two heavy weapons ops when you find them, then get back here. Stay out of sight from the colony and the camp."

"Copy that, Lieutenant."

"That's all."

"Miles out."

Akiban projected the time schedule in her head and decided that it was still possible to stage the raid on the fort before sunrise. The sooner the device was gone the better.

"There is a catch," the turian declared.

Akiban looked at him, silent.

"I'm not keeping the mass effect bombs here. Along with some of my other equipment, they were delivered in a sealed container and stored in a warehouse not far from here."

"False name?" Akiban wondered.

"Of course."

"Great. How far?"

"Ten minutes on foot, if you're quick. However, I suggest we establish a basic plan of operations before we leave from here."

"Why not," Akiban said. "What other equipment do you have in that container?"

"Disassembled weapons and replacement parts, a replacement hardsuit, medi- and omni-gel, basic chemical compounds to make simple explosives, that sort of thing."

"How did you get that through customs?" Nakata wondered.

The turian's mandibles twitched. "What do you humans call this? Professional secret?"

Nakata rolled his eyes.

Akiban shook her head. Even with the mass effect bombs an infiltration of the fort was next to impossible. Like all bases of its kind, the fort was surrounded by two walls: a lower outer wall with gun towers mounting anti-infantry weaponry, and a higher inner wall with larger towers mounting heavier anti-air and anti-vehicle rocket launchers and mass accelerators. All of those systems were coordinated by a military-grade VI that had access to both ground-side and orbit-based sensors. That would allow the garrison fort to detect any unwelcome approach and eliminate it in the open terrain around the base. Therefore, an open attack was out of the question.

"I don't suppose you can just turn on that camouflage of yours and sneak into the fort and just get everything done?" she asked the turian not too seriously.

Varelius made that amused sound again. "Unfortunately not. My cloaking device can't stay active for more than five minutes, and that only thanks to modifications I've made; any longer and it might fail due to overheating. Permanently. That time window is too narrow to get in there and send the message undetected."

"But you could have sent it from the dish," Nakata said.

"Had I had the reset codes, yes. But when the colony's VI was shut down, the administration building became the only place to acquire them. Being in the middle of the city, an infiltration of the structure would have been extremely risky."

"Right," Nakata granted. Obviously he wasn't convinced, but he let it go.

While seeing Nakata's point, Akiban just didn't have the information necessary to prove that Varelius was lying to them; and even had she had it, what would she accomplish in doing so? Maybe it was better to keep the Spectre's awareness of her suspicions to a minimum.

"It doesn't matter," she finally said. "We're here now, and we've got to deal with it the way things are."

"I agree," Varelius said immediately. "I'd like to point out that we also need to plan for the eventuality that the comm buoy will be offline again. Whatever they did to shut it down, they could have done it again since you've transmitted the reset codes."

Akiban nodded. "That would complicate things, yes, but it's better to be prepared than to hope it's not the case."

"Exactly." It seemed to her that the turian was agreeing with her a bit too readily.

The problem was complex, and the lieutenant started breaking it down into more manageable pieces. "All right, what are the objectives once we're in there? I suggest we structure any infiltration plans around our mission. First, we need to get the message to the comm buoy. How do we do that?"

"We're gonna need access to long range communications hardware," Nakata said. "Options are the fort's main communications array, a shuttle, or one of the interceptors that should be stationed there."

"I won't be able to carry the four mass effect bombs alone," Varelius explained. "I suggest that I go and send the message from a shuttle or one of the fighter craft. They should be more easily accessible than the main array."

And what message will you send, Akiban asked herself. And who will be the recipient? Here's where things were about to get interesting. Varelius was certainly right when he said he couldn't carry the bombs on his own, and having him move with the Marines would be a waste of his cloaking capabilities. His being perfectly suited for the task was a factor that threatened to compromise Akiban's primary objective.

"Your silence tells me you have an objection," the turian said after a long moment.

Damn his perceptiveness. "I like to consider alternatives before agreeing to the first option that's presented to me," Akiban said, content with her evasion.

Varelius crossed his arms in front of his chest and appeared to wait patiently.

Akiban decided that she would let him do the part but prepare a fail-safe of her own. "Okay, you've got the job. The message is yours. Nakata, I want you to update the message we wanted to send at the dish with what we've learned since and make it available to the Spectre."

"Yes, Lieutenant." He didn't sound happy.

Akiban pressed the fingers of her left hand against her left temple. "We, uh, we still need a backup plan in case the buoy is down again."

"Are you all right, Lieutenant?" Varelius asked.

Not certain how to judge or respond to his concern she just shook her head. "Fine."

"I doubt we'll be operational long enough in the vicinity of the device to wait for the buoy to reinitialize itself," Varelius mused. "I think we should implement an irreversible fail-safe that will send our message regardless of our status."

"Sounds good. How do we do that?"

"I was thinking of programming an adaptive virus that will infect the fort's systems and automatically deliver the message to the buoy."

Running the basic parameters through his head, Nakata frowned. "Uploading the virus to the mainframe is out of the question. The fort's VI would detect it and purge it immediately. But if we could manage to feed the virus into a shuttle's systems, preferably into more than one to create redundancy, it might stay undetected for long enough to work."

"I'm going to require your assistance in the creation of the virus, Chief," the turian said. "Your expertise on Alliance systems is likely superior to mine, and we can't afford to make any mistakes."

"Lieutenant?" Nakata threw her an asking glance.

"Give him a hand, Chief."

"Aye."

Akiban felt sympathy for Nakata's reservations. Like her, he probably felt that they were constantly playing resources and information into the turian's hands. He had saved their lives, yes, but it had cost him three rockets. Now that investment was paying off handsomely. If he survived, he'd be walking out of this with knowledge of Alliance tech, operation procedures, infantry combat capability and resilience, and maybe more. Blasted turian. She could still put a round in his head when he didn't expect it. Although she doubted that he trusted them completely, a sudden escalation could catch him off guard nonetheless.

Thinking about shooting a Spectre. Way to go, Akiban thought bitterly and shook her head. She had to occupy her mind. Letting her thoughts wander led her down strange paths. "The device."

"Locating it will be easy," Varelius said. "It emits a unique energy signature any omni-tool can pick up. I'll set you up with the activation sequence for the mass effect bombs once we've retrieved them. You should be able to handle the rest."

Akiban tried to force herself to ignore the amount of trust the Spectre was displaying. The operational freedom he was granting her was outright annoying. That had to tell her something. But what? She found it hard to think, to focus. It was frustrating because she was used to being able to analyze and assess situations with great insight—that ability had gotten her through NCOS[1], OCS, and combat deployment so far. But now no insight was coming to her. It was like something was jamming the clockwork that was her thinking machine, like a wedge driven between the cogs that were her trains of thought. What was she without that ability? A Marine with a rifle. That was a lot, but in her position it wasn't enough.

"Are you all right, Lieutenant?" Varelius asked, tearing her out of her reverie.

"Seriously, I'll shoot the next fuck who asks me that," she hissed.

"She's fine," Nakata said, grinning.

"Look, if there isn't anything else we need to talk about right now, I'll have my ten minutes," Akiban announced. "The two of you can get working on the virus. Nakata, keep an ear on comm traffic in case Miles reports in. You can take a break after you're done."

"Will do."

"Great." Akiban marched over to Miller's armchair and shooed the corporal out of it. "I'm taking a nap now. Guard is yours."

Akiban had barely slept two minutes when a gut-wrenching scream made her snap awake, her right hand on her sidearm. She scanned the room, suddenly fully alert, searching for the source of the disturbance.

It was Vinne. He was still lying on the couch, but his arms and legs—what was left of them, anyway—were flailing wildly as he tried to hit McKenzie, who was holding him down, failing to calm him.

"What's going on?" Akiban demanded, jumping out the armchair.

"I don't know!" McKenzie exclaimed. "He suddenly woke up and started screaming. I—" A swing of Vinne's fist hit him square in the jaw and made him slip off the other medic's armor. Vinne, his face pale and eyes wide, sprang up and wanted to jump forward, but he fell, not realizing his right leg ended below the knee. That gave McKenzie the moment he needed to throw himself at Vinne and ram an injector into the other man's neck. The device released a powerful sedative into Vinne's body, and he went limp immediately.

"What the hell," Akiban muttered as she helped McKenzie drag Vinne back onto the couch.

Connor and Miller came rushing from an adjacent room while Arden stumbled out of the bathroom. Even Nakata and Varelius peered through the door of the office room they had been working in.

"It's all right, it's all right," Akiban said. "Everything's under control," she added, and everybody slowly returned to what they had been doing.

"He's not gonna wake up for at least another hour," McKenzie said, massaging his jaw.

"Sleeping really seems like a bad idea," the lieutenant muttered.

"Well, he's been out since the dish. I put some heavy sedatives in him to facilitate transportation. I can't say if what we just saw was a stress reaction or an attack on us."

Akiban bit her lower lip. "Let's not take any chances. Tie his left wrist and ankle and disable his comm implant package."

"Aye."

Yawning, Akiban closed her eyes and focused on her own condition, wondering if the brief nap had brought her mind back on track. The headache was pretty much gone now, which was good, and the break seemed to have helped to stop thinking about that mess they were in, if only for a short time.

Akiban checked her omni-tool. It was 0217 _North Cape _shipboard time, probably midnight local soon. An urge to finally get moving came over her. Resting in the house was dry, warm, and comfortable, but they had tarried too long for her taste. With every minute that passed, they were exposed to the effects of the device, and the enemy got more time to do whatever they were doing. She could almost hear Lieutenant Commander Kedra, her Strategy and Tactics instructor at OCS, scream, "Initiative, Akiban. Initiative! You leave it to the enemy, you die! And your entire platoon dies with you!"

Akiban allowed herself a faint smile. She wondered what Kedra would have done in her stead. She couldn't tell. She couldn't even tell what she could have done differently. Kedra was famous for confronting officer candidates with ridiculous scenarios that pushed them to edge of their sanity. Maybe this Charlie-Foxtrot situation down here would even have made the seasoned strategist and tactician break a sweat.

After crossing the room, she stuck her head through the doorway into the office in which Varelius and Nakata were working on the virus. "How's it looking, gentlemen?"

The office was only illuminated by the golden shine of holo-displays and omni-tools. Both Nakata and the turian were sitting in office chairs and leaning over a table full of holo-displays, the only visible furniture.

"We're almost done," Nakata answered.

"That was fast," Akiban admitted.

"We're not bothering to hide the thing in the subsystems," the chief explained. "It'll look like a security update of the comm software, only that it won't change the version number or show the installation in the internal maintenance logs. It'll be hard to find unless you know what to look for."

"It will also be easy to remove once discovered," Varelius warned. "Installing it on multiple ships will be crucial."

"Okay," Akiban agreed. Even if the software was discovered, the fort personnel would have to check all of their vehicles and remove it. That would take time, and time could save the plan. "How long? I want to get moving ASAP."

"Five minutes," Nakata said. "More or less."

"Okay. Report to me when you're done, then we'll move to the warehouse to retrieve the mass effect bombs."

"As ordered," Varelius said in a teasing tone.

Akiban scowled but left them alone. Back in the living room she commed, "Miles, Akiban. What's your status?"

"Copy, Lieutenant. I have not found them yet. I've been searching the plain on the far side of the colony in expanding semicircles. They can't be much farther away."

"Copy, Miles. Listen, we will be changing positions very soon. It's not far from here. I'll transmit the coordinates to you once you've made contact with our people. You can regroup with us there."

"Acknowledged, Lieutenant."

"Akiban out." She cut the channel.

It sure was comfortable in the house. She decided to make the best use of it and follow nature's call while there were sanitary installations available—doing so in the field or in the middle of combat was a pain, and so was the following maintenance and cleaning. After closing the door behind herself, she inspected the utilitarian room. There was a small shower cabin, a sink with a mirror above it, and a toilet. The walls and the ground were covered with checkered tiles. She unclipped her equipment belt and released the locks that connected the upper-body armor with the greaves, pulling the latter down. Then she pulled down the pair of skintight shorts she was wearing and sat down on the toilet. Sometimes officers wore their casual uniform under their hardsuit, but that was bad practice on longer missions because it usually resulted in nasty abrasions. Instead, most Marines wore a set of underwear consisting of a shirt, shorts, and socks that didn't rub against the skin as they moved, while its outer layer resisted the chafing of the armor's inner padding.

As she sat there, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees and her chin supported by her hands, Akiban stared at the tiled wall. The combination of blue and white squares started dancing in front of her eyes as they lost focus. Huber's face emerged from the moving patterns. Gunnery Chief Markus Huber had had family on Earth and a bright career ahead of himself. Akiban was going to recommend him to Staff Lieutenant Keller, her company's CO, for transfer to OCS once this deployment tour was over. Huber had been twenty-six years old, three years younger than her. Akiban forced those thoughts out of her mind and squeezed her eyes shut so hard that it hurt.

When she hit the flush control, the toilet automatically took care of the washing as well, making her grimace. She pulled up her shorts, making sure there were no creases in the fabric, and pulled the greaves up as well, locking and sealing them with her upper-body armor. Lastly, she slung her equipment belt with all its pouches around her waist and secured it with clamps on chest- and backplate that held it in place.

Once she had double-checked her gear, making sure it was all locked properly, Akiban leaned over the sink and looked in the mirror. Her bright gray eyes were slightly bloodshot, and she realized that she had completely forgotten about the now dried smears of blood in her face. Additionally, everything below the visor line and above the chin guard was covered by a crust of mud, just like her armor. She unsealed her gloves and pulled them off, then she held her hands under the faucet, letting the warm water flow over them. She washed her face, rubbing it hard with her wet hands, until most of the blood and dirt were gone.

Somebody knocked on the door. "You in there, Lieutenant?" Nakata's voice.

"Yeah."

"We're good to go, LT."

"All right. Get everybody on their feet and ready to move. We're leaving Vinne here. I'll be with you in a minute."

"Wilco."

Akiban dried her hands and face with a towel she found and put her gloves back on. Outside, Nakata, Varelius, and what remained of 1st Squad were ready to go.

* * *

[1] NCOS: Non-Commissioned Officer School


	6. Chapter 6

**VI**

It wasn't raining anymore, but the temperature had dropped below minus twenty degrees centigrade. The frozen rainwater had covered the ground with a thin layer of ice, which made rapid movement on foot difficult. Nonetheless, Akiban was setting a brisk pace as she was leading her Marines toward the coordinates of the warehouse; Varelius was moving alone, scouting the path ahead of them.

Almost running, rifle in patrol position, Akiban had taken point, closing in on the waypoint she had set on her HUD earlier. The visor's nano-coated surface was resistant to fogging over and remained clear in spite of white clouds of condensed breath rising from her face with every exhalation. Her lungs were burning with the cold of the air, and she had to force herself to keep going. Speed was of the essence, she knew. Although the streets were empty and all windows dark at the moment, they risked exposure with every minute in the open, and there was still much to do. With no vehicles and weakened manpower, Akiban doubted that she and her Marines would be able to fend off another mass assault by the colonists; it was best to go unnoticed.

She took a brief glance over her shoulder. McKenzie was supporting Connor so the wounded heavy weapons op could keep up, Miller and Arden were flanking, and Nakata was following in a rearguard position, looking back regularly. The formation was rather combat than stealth oriented, but Akiban had decided in favor of the best possible all-around vision; all the stealth in the galaxy wouldn't help them if they suddenly found themselves in the middle of a swarm of husks they hadn't seen coming. With numerous colonists still inside the buildings around them, their proximity sensors indicated contacts in all directions and made their eyesight ever the more important.

"Come on, we're almost there!" she called as the number below the waypoint dropped under a hundred meters.

The Marines cut through a row of buildings and bypassed a wide traffic circle in the south, finally reaching a position from which the warehouse was in plain sight. At the border between the suburb and what seemed to be an industrial quarter, surrounded by open space that facilitated heavy lifter traffic, the warehouse loomed in the darkness, two stories high, a bulky structure with slightly inclined outer walls.

Akiban, hidden in the superficially frozen foliage of a native bush-plant at the edge of the large open area around the target structure, deleted the waypoint from her HUD and activated her comms. "Varelius, this is Akiban. I can see the warehouse."

"Copy that, Lieutenant. I've crossed the loading area, and I am now at a delivery port on the north side of the building. My armor's sensors are picking up four contacts inside. I suspect hostiles. We'll have to neutralize them. I could attempt doing it alone, but I'd rather not take any risks."

"Yeah, we'll do it. Just make sure there's an access point ready when we get there," she replied. "Akiban out."

"It's probably for the better," Nakata said. "If they're noncombatant, we can just capture them. I doubt he would bother."

"You're right," Akiban agreed. "Let's get going."

They crossed the street and the adjacent loading area. Then they circled around the building to its north facade, hugging the wall. Varelius was already waiting for them at a small ground-level door next to a row of massive loading gates.

"I've unlocked it," the turian announced, gesturing at the door. Helmet on his head, his face was once more obscured by a black-tint visor. "Have fun." With that he activated his camouflage and vanished on the spot.

Akiban studied the door for a moment. At first, she wondered if it was booby-trapped from the inside, but she discarded the thought. There was no reason to trap the backdoor of a nondescript warehouse in the middle of the city—unless, of course, the turian had led them to this specific door, and a carefully laid out noose was about to tighten around them.

"Prepare to breach building," she finally ordered. "Nakata, check for IED[1]."

The Marines lined up along the wall on both sides of the door, weapons at the ready, the outermost two covering the surrounding area. Nakata, leaning against the door on the lock-side, activated his omni-tool and ran along the door-frame, then over the lock. "Clear."

Akiban pulled her—no, Alvarez's—rifle from her back and readied it. "Miller, Arden, you're taking point. Do it quietly. I don't want them to know we're here until we have to engage. Don't shoot unless they're armed, try to call for reinforcements, or try to make a run for it. Shoot to disable if they're civilians, kill if they're Marines. Got it?"

"Got it," the corporals replied.

"All right." Akiban took a deep breath. "Breach first room."

Arden swapped places with Nakata on the lock-side and slowly pushed the door open while Miller aimed her rifle at the widening gap. When the door was open far enough, the two fire team leaders moved inside.

Not expecting any contact, Akiban followed. It was dark in there, but not pitch-black. She set her visor to amplify residual light and her vision improved a bit, at least enough so she didn't bump into one of the Marines already scanning the area. The interior space was filled with a framework that supported four levels of horizontal racks for container storage. A system of rails for automated trolleys ran horizontally and vertically around the rows. Each of the loading gates had a large elevator platform next to it; most of them were locked on the ground floor, but one of them was lowered to the level below, betrayed by the pillar of light that shone through the square opening in the ground.

Treading carefully, Akiban snuck to the source of the light, deactivating the amplification of her visor, and peered over the edge.

"What the hell..." She only breathed the words.

Among the framed racks that were identical to those on the upper level, Akiban could see the shapes of two exosuit-wearing quarians. She was fairly certain that those were quarians. They were standing next to a cracked container, chatting in a language Akiban didn't understand. From what she could see, the aliens were armed with pistols, shotguns, and assault rifles, their exosuits colored in a variety of matte colors.

Carefully, Akiban slid away from the edge, setting her visor to amplification again, and approached the other Marines who had also entered the warehouse by now.

"We've got two armed quarians down there," she whispered.

"Quarians? What the hell is their kind doing here?" Nakata whispered back.

"I have no clue," she replied, answering his obviously rhetoric question. "Connor, Arden, you take up position here at the elevator. Stop the quarians if they try to make a run for it. Lethal force authorized. Miller, you close the door behind us and stand guard."

The Marines acknowledged their orders and moved into position.

"Nakata, McKenzie, you're with me. There must be a staircase or a ladder that leads down to the lower level. Nakata, take point."

The chief nodded and moved out.

"Varelius, Akiban," she commed as she was following Nakata.

"I read you, Lieutenant, but you're low."

"That's because I'm whispering," she hissed, annoyed. "We've spotted two of our contacts on the lower level. They're quarians. Armed quarians. We're now moving to engage. We'll try to capture them alive for questioning, but I can't guarantee for anything."

"Quarians? Interesting. I copy. Comm me again when you're about to make your move. I'll get to the lower level and back you up."

"Wilco. Akiban out."

They reached a cross-level column with a personnel elevator and an emergency staircase on the side. Making their way down, they tried to make as little noise as possible as their boots touched the metal steps. Nakata went first and waved them down after he arrived at the bottom. A row of containers obscured their approach, and they hid behind them.

"If any of them has got a sensor array in the exosuit..." Nakata whispered, deliberately leaving the sentence unfinished.

Akiban silenced him with a motion of her hand; it was too late to worry about that now. She checked her own sensors. The other two contacts were farther back on the same level, approaching slowly.

"Okay, listen." She kept her voice as low as possible. "Nakata, you stay here and keep your tech ready. I'll tell them to drop to their knees and to stretch out their arms to the sides. If they do anything, and I mean anything other than exactly what I tell them to, I want you to spam them with tech. Disable their weapons first, then their shields. Even if they manage to knock out ours, too, we still got these." She pointed at her knife. "They won't last long with their suits ripped open—not to mention their guts. Questions?"

Silence.

Akiban checked her sensors again. The four quarians were now standing close together, their chatter audible all the way to the Marines' hiding place.

"Varelius, Akiban."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant."

Akiban hesitated for a moment. What if the aliens were in league with each other? What if Varelius was using the quarians to neutralize the weakened Marines? The turian had engaged his camouflage system, and Akiban had no idea where he was. Maybe her head was in the sights of his sniper rifle this very moment. Her head twitched to the side unconsciously.

"Lieutenant?" Damn the lizard.

She swallowed hard and forced these thoughts out of her mind. "I'm here. We're about to make our move. Be ready."

"Acknowledged."

"Akiban out." She readied her rifle and peered over the row of containers they were hiding behind. "Let's do this. McKenzie, you go around the right."

The lieutenant snuck around the containers on the left and stepped out into the open, rifle trained on the nearest quarian. "You are surrounded! Get on your knees!" she barked. "Arms out to the sides!"

After a moment's hesitation and a series of exchanged glances, omni-tools came to life and hands snapped to holstered weapons. A wave of red lightning rippled and licked over the quarians, followed by a blue flash. At the same time, Akiban was hit by a red flash as well, her weapon firing only one round and immediately overheating. An ejectable heatsink would have been great. Launching ahead, Akiban threw her rifle away and sprinted toward the quarians, who were already diving for cover behind the open container in the middle of the corridor between the storage racks.

A flash of blue lightning exploded around Akiban, almost knocking out her shields. Past the red shield indicator on her HUD, she could see barrels appear around the edges of the container. There was the muzzle flash of a fired weapon. She dove to the ground, too late, and the burst of pellets caught her in the left shoulder. Shields winked out of existence, and Akiban was knocked back in spite of her forward movement. Pain exploded from the wounded joint, and a burning sensation spread to her arm and chest from where the projectiles had pierced her armor and burrowed into her flesh.

Lying on the ground, Akiban could see McKenzie sprint past her on the far right and make his way to the container. Grimacing, the lieutenant activated the medi-gel injection system and struggled to her feet, resuming her charge, her left arm dangling uselessly at her side, pain shooting from it with every step she took in spite of the gel's anesthetic effect.

As McKenzie disappeared behind the container, Akiban grabbed her pistol, aware that she'd be able to fire only one round until the effects of the enemy remote sabotage wore off. Taking the corner around the container sharply, Akiban kicked a pistol out of the way and fired her own sidearm. The round punched through what remained of the quarian's shields after Nakata had overloaded them and penetrated the exosuit at the leg.

On the other side, McKenzie was engaged in hand-to-hand combat with two of the quarians; in spite of the numbers, the odds were clearly on the medic's side: He was almost half a meter taller than his exosuit-wearing opponents and weighed about twice as much as one of them. Akiban focused on the second quarian on her side, a female cowering against the container. She kicked her in the head laterally, scoring a hit next to the visor, and the quarian collapsed immediately. Then Akiban moved on to assist McKenzie. As the medic was slamming one of his opponents on the ground, Akiban kicked the other in the back of the knee and, as he went down, she unsheathed her knife and lunged out, ready to drive the blade into the quarian's neck. Her muscles flexed to carry out the lethal strike, but her arm didn't come down. Instead, a gloved, two-fingered hand appeared around her wrist, a firm grip preventing Akiban from plunging the blade into the quarian.

"I think that's enough," a muffled voice said imperatively.

Akiban spun around and kicked her new opponent in the armored stomach. The attack was not very effective, but it came as a surprise and the armored figure staggered back. Only now did Akiban realize that it was a turian. She wrenched her wrist from his grip, freeing her knife arm, tackled him, and drove him backward until his back crashed against the framework behind him. She placed a kick on the inside of his knee and put her knife at his armored throat as he went down.

The turian finally responded to the attack, slacking in her grip and sliding out of it. In the same motion, he grabbed her wounded arm and used his weight to drag her down with him. Unable to prevent the fall, Akiban directed her body to come down on his before she lost her balance, reversing the grip on her knife at the same time.

The blade only cut the flexible fabric at the turian's neck as he twitched to the side, barely preventing worse damage. Still holding on to her wounded arm, the turian threw Akiban off himself and wrenched the limb behind her back. Pain exploded from her shoulder as she came to lie on her stomach, the arm at an angle that would have been painful even without the injury, the turian's knee pressed against her neck.

"That's enough, Lieutenant!" the turian said in a commanding tone.

She screamed, struggling against his grip, but he was too strong and in a superior position.

"Lieutenant!" Nakata's voice. "What's going on here?"

"She attacked me," the turian breathed.

"Let me go, for fuck's sake!" Akiban hissed, the pain almost paralyzing.

Nakata trained his shotgun at the turian. "Let her go. Now."

The turian made an annoyed sound. "As you wish."

Finally free, Akiban rolled on her back, moaning in pain, and kicked in another dose of medi-gel. The pain went from agonizing to uncomfortable, and she breathed heavily in relief. From the numbing effect of the medi-gel a pulsing headache manifested itself at the back of her head. She swore quietly.

"You okay, Lieutenant?" Nakata asked, his weapon still aimed at the turian.

"Sure." She sat up, hugging her arms around her knees, and looked at Varelius. "Don't ever get in my way again. Ever."

"I thought you wanted the quarians questioned, not butchered," he said nonchalantly. "Besides,"—he pointed at the gash in his collar—"that was unnecessary."

She shook her head. She didn't know why she had responded this violently. Varelius was on their side. Or wasn't he? Just moments ago she had been ready to kill him. She had been convinced that he had betrayed them. In hindsight, it didn't make any sense. "Sorry 'bout that."

He seemed to accept her apology with a skeptical nod.

Akiban sheathed her knife and slowly rose to her feet. "Disarm the quarians and deactivate their omni-tools," she ordered, deactivating her shields.

"Yes, ma'am," Nakata confirmed and hurried off after shooting Varelius a skeptical glance.

"You lost control there," Varelius whispered after stepping closer to her.

She looked at him darkly. "It's the influence of the device, isn't it?"

"Likely."

Akiban tried to move her left arm and grunted as it painfully refused to respond. "McKenzie!"

"Ma'am?" the medic called back from where he was helping disarm the quarians.

"Take a look at my shoulder, will you?"

"Yes, ma'am." McKenzie finished searching the last quarian and ran over to Akiban. He conducted a medical scan with his omni-tool after arriving and frowned at the results. "I'll have to treat this."

She rolled her eyes. "Can you do it while I have a chat with the quarians?"

"Well, it's not great, but I can."

"Good." She took off her helmet and marched over to where Nakata was standing guard over the four quarian prisoners. Varelius followed her at a distance.

"Chief, please collect my weapons."

Nakata shot her an awkward glance but walked off without protest.

McKenzie started taking off Akiban's armor, removing her left glove, bracer, elbow pad, and shoulder guard.

"All right, let's start over. I'm Lieutenant Akiban, Systems Alliance Navy Marines. You fired on us. You shot me."

McKenzie unclipped Akiban's chest and back plates and removed them. Then he opened the base layer of her upper-body armor and pulled it down on the left side. The smell of perspiration and medi-gel was in the air.

"You are?"

First the quarians looked at each other, then the female Akiban had knocked out with a kick before spoke. "I am Kela'Van nar Rayya."

"You are on your pilgrimage?" Varelius asked.

"We are," the quarian replied.

"Pilgrimage?" Akiban asked, as McKenzie pulled her arm out of the sleeve of her tight-fitting shirt and lifted the bottom of the shirt up and over her shoulder, revealing the vines of a black and blue tribal tattoo that covered a muscled shoulder and upper arm and disappeared under a tight-fitting sports bra.

"Quarians are sent on pilgrimage as a sort of passage into adulthood. They must leave the Migrant Fleet and return with a gift to the captain of the ship whose crew they wish to join," Varelius explained.

McKenzie ran another scan on Akiban's shoulder and started removing the tiny projectiles that had buried into her flesh. She grimaced. It hurt.

"What brings you to Balance Point?" Varelius asked.

"We followed rumors of geth activity in the system," Kela answered, betraying a thick accent. "We hoped to recover geth technology and analyze it. We could have returned that information to the fleet as a gift."

Akiban clenched her teeth as McKenzie removed another pellet from her shoulder. "Well, it seems you've found your geth technology."

"Yes." Kela titled her head to the side. "You aren't crazy like all the others here, are you?"

"No," Akiban said. "We're not."

The quarians looked at each other but remained silent.

Nakata came running and put Akiban's rifle and pistol on the ground next to the parts of her armor. "We need to find the container, ma'am."

"Varelius?" Akiban said in the Spectre's direction.

He looked at her, then at the quarians, and walked off reluctantly.

"What were you doing here? I mean here specifically." the lieutenant inquired, turning back to the prisoners.

"We were looking for supplies," Kela answered.

"Human food is inedible for quarians," McKenzie said and removed the last pellet from Akiban's shoulder.

"Son of a bitch!" she hissed through clenched teeth.

"Done."

"All right, patch me up," Akiban told the medic, still grimacing, and returned her attention to the quarians. "You're running out of supplies?"

"Not yet," Kela said. "But we don't know how long we'll be stuck here."

The quarian Akiban had shot earlier groaned in pain, clutching his leg. "Lago!" Kela exclaimed and turned to face him.

Akiban was sure that Kela was lying about the intentions of her party, but she had no way to prove it, so she let it go for now. There was no point in antagonizing them even more, especially because she was considering to integrate them into her operation. While she didn't think that she could trust them any more than she could trust the turian, she figured that their abilities could come in handy. Maybe it was time for a demonstration of good intent.

"McKenzie, check his wound when you're done with me."

"I assure you that won't be necessary!" Kela called. "His suit has already sealed off the damaged part, and the medi-gel will heal the wound and prevent an infection."

"I don't care," Akiban said. "Like it or not, we're all in this together. I won't have him running around with an untreated gunshot wound."

Kela looked at Lago and the wounded quarian nodded. "As you wish," she finally said.

McKenzie wrapped Akiban's shoulder in a supporting bandage that covered the entire joint and her entire upper arm. "The flesh wounds will heal," he said. "But one of the pellets lacerated the periosteum of the humerus right below the shoulder. That's gonna hurt for a while. The bandage will support the joint, but I suggest you minimize the stress on your left arm. I'd bathe the wound in medi-gel, but considering our situation, you'll probably want to save as much of it as you can."

"Okay. Thanks, McKenzie. Check out the quarian now."

"No problem," the medic said and knelt down next to his next patient. "All right, let's see what we have here."

Akiban tested the range of motion of her bandaged shoulder and grimaced at the pain the movement caused. Then she put her armor back on, picked up her weapons, and joined Nakata and Varelius, who were about to open a container.

"Is this yours?" she asked.

"Yes," the turian replied, deactivating the seal and opening the large crate. He immediately started rummaging through its contents.

"Land Rider One, this is Ktenge."

"I read you, Commander," Akiban responded. Finally. "Have you implemented the new encryption protocols?"

"Affirmative."

"What's your status, Commander?"

"We had to abandon the camp when the enemy decided to pay us a visit. We've been on the move ever since."

Akiban took a deep breath. "Okay, listen. Our raid on the dish was successful, but we only managed to send the reset codes before the enemy destroyed the dish. We've taken casualties when they dispatched a mechanized patrol and are now in need of reinforcements. I need Miles to pick up four more Marines and regroup with me at my coordinates."

"What's your plan?"

"The only way to get a message off world now is the garrison fort. That's where we'll be headed."

"I won't authorize that." Ktenge's voice was sharp. "An attack on the garrison fort is suicide. And what of that Spectre you've made contact with? What of that device that seems to be responsible for the situation here? Come on, Lieutenant, talk to me."

Akiban sighed, craning her neck. She wondered if Ktenge really didn't know what was going on. "Yeah, the device. I don't know any more about it than you do. The Spectre says it's the cause for the colonists' hostile behavior, and I believe him. We'll try knocking the thing out while we're at the fort."

"You trust the Spectre?" Ktenge asked. "Isn't he suffering from the same, uh, symptoms the colonists are showing?"

Akiban shook her head. She could hardly speak freely with Varelius right next to her. Even though he seemed busy enough, she had no doubt that the turian was paying close attention to her end of the conversation. "Cooperation is necessary. We're screwed if we don't work together."

"That doesn't answer my question, Lieutenant."

"Yes, I trust the Spectre, ma'am." She barely believed that she had actually just said that.

"Okay. I trust your judgment, Lieutenant."

Like hell you do, Akiban thought. "Can I now have my reinforcements, please?"

"You will not attack the fort, Lieutenant. That's crazy."

"I don't intend a frontal assault, ma'am."

"Then would you mind outlining your plan?"

Akiban snorted a laugh. She had no plan. "The details are still in development," she finally commed. "We're currently acquiring equipment."

"You're acquiring equipment even though you don't have a plan yet?"

"I figured it wouldn't hurt," Akiban said. The headache was getting worse again, and she didn't feel like arguing with Ktenge. If she gave her orders to Morand directly, maybe he'd send the Marines in spite of Ktenge's protests. That would be insubordination. Not that the commander could stop them, but such things meant trouble; Akiban wasn't ready to maneuver any of her Marines into harm's way any more than she already had.

"I've lost four Marines and a Mako, three dead, one incap. I need my people here!"

"I won't let you sacrifice your people in a futile attack on a superior enemy force!" Akiban heard Ktenge take a calming breath. "Look, Lieutenant. Our objective must now be to stay alive to warn anyone who comes looking for us."

"That's bullshit!" Akiban exclaimed.

"Mind your tone, Lieutenant!" Ktenge warned.

The headache now throbbed in Akiban's head, and she was starting to lose her patience. She looked at the ground and pressed the palm of her right hand flat against the base of her skull. "The longer we're here the longer we're exposed to the influence of that geth device. Chances are that by the time a ship arrives, we won't be warning them but shooting at them."

"That's a risk I'm willing to take."

"But I'm not."

"Lieutenant, I'm ordering you to pull out of the city and regroup with us. It seems the influence of the device has clouded your judgment."

Funny, Akiban thought, how only moments earlier Ktenge had assured her of her trust. It almost seemed to her that the commander was working against her, trying to sabotage whatever Akiban attempted. Maybe Ktenge had been overwhelmed by the influence of the device in spite of the distance, or maybe she was working for the enemy unconsciously, unaware of the consequences of her actions. How was she not seeing that Akiban was right? Blasted fleet cowards. It was so easy to make decisions and pass judgment from the safety of a shielded ship while Marines died in the field. There was no ship now, but the disposition was the same.

Akiban killed the connection and set her comms to the platoon's squad leader channel. "Morand, this is Akiban."

"I read you, Lieutenant, uh, what? No... I... Wait. Lieutenant, Commander Ktenge is ordering me to not listen to anything you say. She asks me to inform you that she's relieving you of your command."

"Well, fuck her. Look, I need you to send reinforcements back to my position, preferably before sunrise. The commander is trying to sabotage our operations here. There is a chance that she is under the influence of the enemy. Or she's just stupid. Either way, I need you to trust me. Do you hear me, Chief? I need you to trust me!"

"I... I don't know. I—look, just be quiet for a minute! Sorry... Ma'am."

"I'm your commanding officer, dammit!" Akiban exclaimed. "This is a direct order! You will send me reinforcements according to Miles's instructions."

"I..." He sighed and there was a long pause. "Yes, Lieutenant. Reinforcements will be on their way shortly. I'm sorry, Commander, but judging by your earlier decisions, you're more concerned with the well-being of people than with the success of the mission. This is bigger than us. I cannot in good conscience obey your orders."

"Good man!" Take that, Commander, Akiban thought, a smug smile spreading over her face. Don't fuck with the Marines, ship rat. "You have my permission to place Commander Ktenge under arrest should she give you any crap, Chief."

"Understood, Lieutenant."

"There's a small door on the north side of the warehouse. It's unlocked but guarded by us. Use that to access the building. I'll transmit the coordinates to you now. Akiban out." She sent the position data.

"Problems?" Varelius asked as he dragged a large crate out of the container.

"Nothing you need to worry about," Akiban muttered, her smile vanishing a bit with each throb of ache. "Are those the mass effect bombs?"

"Yes." Varelius opened the crate, revealing a number of gray and black egg-shaped objects with control panels on their sides. They looked like oversized footballs to Akiban. After close inspection, the turian singled out four of the devices and pointed at them. "I suggest you use these four against the geth device."

That made Nakata skeptical. "Why these four specifically?"

"Because they release a pleasing odor before the mass effect explosion. That makes the aftermath more bearable."

Akiban snorted. "You're kidding."

"Of course I'm kidding. But I find your unceasing paranoia amusing."

Feeling the sudden urge to beat the turian to death with her bare hands, Akiban scowled. "Very funny. What's the real reason?"

Varelius sighed. "These four have improved field induction coils. They are more reliable and use their element zero charge more efficiently. I don't want to take any chances with equipment considering the importance of this part of the mission."

Akiban pursed her lips. Somehow she still had the feeling that he was bullshitting her. But maybe it was just the device making her suspicious. Was her judgment really flawed? She buried her face in her hands. "Just get on with it."

"We'll have to start thinking about how to get into the base," Nakata reminded them.

"Yeah," Akiban agreed. "How do we do that?"

"Well, the problem is obvious: There's too much open terrain around the base. There's no way we can approach the fort openly without getting shot to bits its turrets."

"Thanks, Chief," Akiban muttered. "Not to forget their superior numbers, their pool of armored vehicles, gunships, and fighter craft."

"A direct assault does seem inadvisable," Varelius said. "We could use the other mass effect bombs to create a diversion, though that still leaves the method of delivery open."

Akiban almost winced when she realized that Kela was standing right next to her. She hadn't heard the quarian approach. "You don't ever make sounds, do you?"

"I apologize," Kela mumbled, her voice apologetic as far as that could be discerned through the mask of her exosuit.

"What are we going to do with you, anyway?" Akiban mused.

"You intend to use these against the device?" Kela asked, indicating the mass effect bombs with her three-fingered hand.

"Yeah."

"Is the device not in the fort?"

"It is." Akiban tilted her head to each side until the tendons in her neck cracked. "How's Lago?"

"He'll be fine, thanks to your medic's help. Turns out the round pierced the bone in his upper leg. Without proper treatment that could have had severe consequences. We are in your debt, Lieutenant. You had no obligation to help us."

"I'll take all the help I can get," Akiban said. "I'm sure you can put your expertise to some good use."

"That we can," Kela said. "We have developed a plan to infiltrate your military base."

That got even Varelius's attention. He turned away from the contents of his container. "Please do elaborate."

"Essentially, the base's defenses are designed to withstand any attack from the ground or from the air. In the east, on the side of the airfield from here, the defensive emplacements can engage thirty-four targets simultaneously. The goal of our plan is to exceed that number, to give the enemy more targets to shoot at than they can quickly dispatch; this condition must persist long enough for us to enter the base's perimeter. It's unlikely that the turrets will fire on us once we're inside the wall considering only the rocket launchers will have a firing solution at that point. They won't blow up their own base.

"Concretely, we intended to sneak through the city and to rig aircars to our omni-tools for remote control. With enough aircars racing toward the base, we hoped that we could slip past the defenses."

Varelius clacked his mandibles. "An interesting plan."

"It sounds good," even Nakata admitted. "But it'll require some fine-tuning. Those civilian aircars don't have any military-grade sensors, and that means that you have to dodge incoming fire by sight. Further, rigging several vehicles to respond to the same controls will make their evasive maneuvers identical. The fort's VI will see through that immediately. It'll use that knowledge to pick them out of the sky in groups."

"The plan wasn't finished yet," Kela said defensively.

Akiban raised her hands. "It's okay. The plan is good. We probably wouldn't have come up with anything this creative. We'll just make some adjustments to make sure it plays out as effectively as possible. Thank you for sharing this, Kela."

"You're welcome."

"How unexpectedly diplomatic of you, Lieutenant," Varelius teased.

Akiban ignored him. "It's safe to assume that, regardless of what we do, the fort's defenses will take out the first few dozen aircars coming their way. If we want to bring the remaining mass effect bombs to bear, we need to distribute them among the aircars at the rear of the formation. You said we've got seven spares? We'll program them to activate on impact and rain them down on their barracks and vehicles. That should cause enough damage and confusion to give us some time and room to operate inside the base."

"How do we approach and enter the base ourselves?" Varelius asked.

"We could use aircars as well," Nakata suggested. "Flying at the rear of the formation with no more than two of us in one vehicle to minimize losses. Maybe we can use empty aircars to block fire on manned ones."

"So we're gonna need, what, a hundred aircars?" Akiban asked. "That still leaves us with the problem of controlling them independently."

"The more the merrier," Nakata agreed. "At least a hundred."

"Preparing this will take some time," Kela pointed out.

"Lieutenant, this is Miller."

"Go ahead, Corporal," Akiban commed back.

"Proximity sensors are picking up five friendlies approaching. Looks like Miles is back."

"Okay, Chief. Have one of them relieve you at your post so you can take a break. Send the rest of them down."

Miller confirmed the orders and signed out.

"Our people are here," Akiban announced.

"Good news for once," Nakata commented.

"Where was I?" she said. "Ah, yes. Are there any feasible alternatives to controlling the aircars manually?"

"We could program them to automatically take evasive action when sensors register the vibration of impact," Kela proposed.

"That won't help much against incoming rockets, though," Varelius said. "By the time the sensors register the impact, there won't be enough left of the thing to conduct any maneuvers anymore. The anti-infantry weapons pose a similar problem: The aircars don't have shields."

"He's right. Even the machine gun turrets will perforate the aircars within seconds," Nakata said. "Without shields or sensors, those things are really just dummies we'll be throwing at them."

"Are those aircars equipped with optical sensors?" Kela asked.

"Yes," Nakata affirmed. "They're used for navigation and precision maneuvering. I don't see how that's gonna help us, though. Even if we have access to visual feeds, there's no way the few of us can control over a hundred aircars."

"Not us," Kela said. "But a VI could do it."

"Do you have access to a VI?" Akiban asked. "'Cause we don't."

"Doesn't the colony have one?" the quarian asked.

"Yes, but it's been taken off the network," Varelius said.

Kela shook her head. "Can't we reconnect it?"

Akiban heard steps behind her and turned to face the source. Miller and Miles were approaching from the staircase, followed by Privates First Class John Olson and Christian Senega and Private Second Class Catherine Omar. They were all from 3rd Squad's Fire Team Foxtrot. Each of the newcomers was carrying a crate—medi-gel, grenades, water.

"The reinforcements are here, Lieutenant," Miller announced. "Costa is upstairs, guarding the door." Private First Class António Costa was one of 4th Squads advanced marksmen.

"Welcome to the war!" Akiban called. "Miller, I want everybody to recharge their medi-gel supplies, including our quarian friends here. Ramp up the guard at the door to two Marines and set up a guard rotation pattern. See to it that nobody sleeps longer than ten minutes in a row."

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"Good job, Miles," Akiban said in the private's direction. "Nicely done."

"Thank you, ma'am," Miles replied, nodding.

Pressing the index and middle fingers of her left hand against her left temple, Akiban continued. "Can we reconnect the VI to the network?"

"Assuming hardware and software are still intact, yes," Nakata said.

"Where is the VI core?" the lieutenant asked.

"Administration building," Varelius answered.

She rolled her eyes. "Great." She was not looking forward to returning to that place.

"There's another problem," Nakata warned. "Even if we reconnect the VI, there's no guarantee that it'll help us. Civilian VI systems are restricted by behavior protocols. I doubt it'll assist us in hijacking private property and attacking a military fort with it."

"Don't Spectres get special permissions?" Akiban wondered.

"They do, but the Alliance has been frustratingly slow at implementing these measures." Varelius said dryly. "I can't guarantee anything. Don't you have an override?"

"Oh, I'm sure somebody does. I just know that I don't." Akiban made a resigning gesture with her hands. "I suppose a military-grade VI could override... Shit."

"Yeah, shit." Nakata lowered his head.

Varelius and Kela shot him questioning glances.

"Even if we manage to reconnect the colony's VI and get it to cooperate," the chief explained, "the fort's military-grade system will be able to take it out. If—no, when that happens, all of the remote-controlled aircars will just fall out of the sky."

Varelius shook his head. The gesture looked disturbingly human. "That would be bad," he said slowly.

"Solutions?" Akiban demanded.

"I suppose I could install additional firewalls in the colony VI's system," the turian said. "But that would only buy us time at best. VIs are best countered with other VIs, ideally not with utterly inferior ones."

Akiban yawned and ran a gloved hand through her millimeter-long hair. "I'm sure you'll come up with something." She checked her omni-tool. It was 0321 _North Cape _shipboard time. She wanted to get as much of the preparations done as possible while it was still dark. The enemy probably didn't consider them to be much of a threat, and Akiban didn't intended to give them any reason to revise that assessment. They didn't need to know that there was something brewing at their doorstep.

"What do we do once we're inside the base?" Kela asked.

"Varelius will take care of getting message off world," Akiban answered. "Our objective will be to neutralize the geth device and, ideally, stay alive in the process. We'll deploy from our aircars and use the chaos in the fort to get the mass effect bombs into position."

"Do you think the chaos will be sufficient to disguise our presence? I thought we were dealing with Marines." Kela was skeptical. "I don't think they'll just ignore us."

"They won't. Our credits are on the chaos being sufficient to prevent them from mounting a coordinated response to our intrusion—at least long enough for us to get the job done. Also, trained as they may be, those Marines are garrison rats. They have little to no combat experience. Further, we believe that the influence of the geth device is having adverse effects on their mental capabilities."

"And what then?" Kela asked. "I've heard no mention of an evacuation plan."

"Yeah. That." Akiban flashed the quarian an unconvincing smile. There was no evacuation plan. The mission was likely to be a one-way trip. Even if they succeeded in knocking out the device, there was no guarantee the Marines at the fort would return to their former condition. Odds were that they would just keep fighting and finish the intruders off—or worse. Akiban wondered if she was ready to die and to take all of her Marines with her. Maybe she was, and they would follow her. And maybe she couldn't change the fates of any of them, but this went farther. They needed something other than the mission to fight for: survival.

That constituted a major problem, though. Akiban doubted that the mission was survivable. That made formulating a convincing evacuation plan difficult. Even if her Marines would follow her orders no matter the odds, presenting a cardboard evac plan would only convince the quarians that, in fact, she expected them all to die. Akiban had to keep in mind that the quarians were no soldiers; their objective was to initiate their lives as adults, not to end them. She had to give them something they could believe.

"I agree with your earlier assessment that they won't fire their turrets at targets inside the base's perimeter," she finally told Kela. "However, if we leave the base, we'll enter the firing solution of the defensive emplacements again. That means that we pretty much have to stay inside the base."

"What kind of resistance can we expect there?" Kela asked.

"One heavy mechanized infantry battalion and support personnel; that's something over a thousand infantry plus vehicles like tanks and gunships. On a brighter note, we've already taken out three of their tanks and a platoon's worth of infantry."

"Encouraging," the quarian drawled.

"We could hijack one of their vehicles," Nakata proposed. "Shouldn't be too hard so long as they don't realize that we're the enemy. Keep in mind that the base will be in ruins after the mass effect bombs strike. There will be massive chaos. And we'll be moving around in small groups. It'll be near to impossible for them to make out clear targets to engage."

"It's quite a gamble," Varelius said. "I can stay undetected. However, even if they won't realize that your Marines are hostile, Lieutenant, the quarians will clearly stand out."

"We can take care of ourselves," Kela said defiantly. "All I want to know is how we're going to get out of there."

"Let's face it," Varelius announced, "with those turrets online, we're not leaving the fort. And with the orbital defense satellite above the colony, we're not getting off world. It would make sense to attempt to sabotage those systems once we've completed our primary objectives."

Nakata shook his head. "The CIC will go into lock-down as soon as they realize that they're under attack. Scratch the satellite."

"The turrets, then," Akiban said.

"Power?" Kela suggested.

"Too complex to knock out," Nakata said. "Main power is probably in shielded bunkers underground, and there are likely to be decentralized backups."

"So what you're saying is that your great Alliance defenses are impenetrable?" Kela called.

Nakata groaned. "What I'm saying, lady, is that this isn't some fancy story where the protagonists magically discover a fatal weakness in the villain's fortress through some contrived plot device."

"All right, let's just calm down for a minute!" Akiban shouted, preempting Kela's retort. "I think we all need a break. We'll revisit the issue later. Ten minutes."

After replenishing her medi-gel and water supplies, the lieutenant walked off alone, passing through the rows of racks, thinking. Only now did it dawn on her how tense Nakata was, and how tense she was herself. Stress hormones had been hammering at her since the battle at the administration building—no, not battle. It had been a massacre.

And two of her Marines were still missing. Shit. She pressed her palms against her temples. Who was missing? She had to think hard. Richard, no, Rick Anderson and Patrick Rüthemann. Ü—what curious sound.

She leaned against a container, breathing hard to fight the nausea creeping up in. her stomach. Was it easier to shoot at Marines than it was to shoot at colonists? Her mind was racing all of a sudden, leaving her unable to think straight, her focus jumping from one thought to another, following no discernible pattern.

"I need to talk to you privately, Lieutenant." The turian. Behind her.

Somehow she had to regain composure. There had to be some stimulus to get her mind back on track. She refused to go crazy. She pulled the glove off her left hand and unsheathed her knife. Then she embraced the blade with her left hand, pressing the edge against her palm, and slowly pulled it from her own grasp, drawing blood. The sharp pain made her gasp, but it almost felt good, releasing. She coughed and vomited on the floor.

"This is not a good sign," the turian noted.

"Really," she muttered, sheathing her blade again. "What is it?" The headache was still there, but she could think more or less clearly again.

"We need to talk about the quarians."

Akiban jabbed a finger into her wounded palm, a distorted smile spreading on her face. "Talk, then."

"Whatever their abilities may be, the quarians are a liability. They obviously aren't telling us everything, and they can't be trusted. I'm sure that they have some sort of agenda and won't hesitate to betray us and our mission if it serves their purpose."

Funny, Akiban thought, I was thinking the same about you.

"I understand that you may feel some sort of kinship toward them," he continued when she remained silent. "They are human-like, and they seem to have a charismatic leader who is in a position similar to yours. However, I feel the obligation to warn you. They will never reciprocate this feeling of kinship. Quarians are born into a galaxy that despises their kind, and the only way to survive in such a place is to deceive and manipulate. Their only loyalty is to the Migrant Fleet, a place where every newborn is taught not to trust anyone who isn't wearing a face mask. The minds of their entire kind are poisoned for generations to come."

"You think this is about racism?" Akiban asked.

"From your side? Not necessarily. From their side? Definitely," he answered. "Ask yourself this: What do you really know about them?"

Varelius was right. Akiban didn't know a thing about quarians. That was why she didn't trust them. But she didn't trust the turian, either. All alliances forged here were nothing more than alliances of convenience. Yet as long as each party believed that their purpose was being served, they would play along; and Akiban needed them to play along just long enough to complete her objectives.

"Look, I appreciate your concern for the mission, but this isn't taking us anywhere." The headache was making Akiban impatient. She wanted to get moving soon. All of their planning would come to nothing if they all went crazy before the operation even started. "You don't trust the quarians. I don't trust the quarians. You don't trust me. I don't trust you. That's about the gist of it, right?"

Mandibles twitching, the turian sighed. "We may not trust each other, Lieutenant, but we are both soldiers. Our actions are based on our understanding of duty. That's our common ground. The quarians are adolescent vagabonds with no such understanding. You must realize that they have no interest in resolving the situation here."

"I realize that." Akiban was getting tired of this. They had everything they needed, so what were they waiting for? Having something to do would at least distract everybody from their misery. "We need to get moving. Time's a wasting."

"I hope we won't come to regret this cooperation," Varelius whispered

Akiban shared that hope. She decided that she had had enough of a break and returned to the others.

While it was hard for her to judge the turian's condition—either he wasn't being affected by the device as much as humans were, or he was just really good at disguising it—or that of the quarians—she couldn't judge anything about them beyond the fact that they didn't act very lively—she could definitely tell that the Marines of 1st Squad and Nakata were suffering. The smell of vomit stung her nostrils as she reached the container, and it wasn't from her own last meal-gone-renegade. The chief sat slumped against a strut of the storage framework, pressing his palms against his eyes. Miles seemed all right, but she had been outside the city until recently; she was now chatting with the Marines she had brought with her. Miller sat on the ground near the supply crates, arms hugged around her knees, a strained expression on her face. McKenzie was standing with his back to Akiban, checking on the healing progress of the wounds that Arden and Connor had suffered at the dish, their bloodshot eyes embedded in weary facial expressions.

"Okay, listen up!" Akiban barked, her voice much louder than necessary to be heard. She needed to push. All the talking and negotiating and explaining had cost them too much momentum already. "Prepare to get moving! Nakata, on me!"

The Chief dragged himself to his feet and only arrived after Varelius and Kela. The other Marines started getting ready at varying speeds of movement.

"With every minute that passes with us sitting here we're playing straight into the enemy's hands," the lieutenant told the three assembled around her. "Before you start,"—she raised a hand—"there will be an evacuation plan. However, for reasons of lacking intel and resources we'll make it up ad hoc and implement it as we go.

"Nakata, I want you to grab someone and find us two aircars for transportation. We're headed for the administration building. Make sure there's room for everyone.

"Varelius, I want you to distribute the mass effect bombs and to give Nakata and me the activation codes for the four we'll employ against the device.

"Kela, you get your people ready to move. I'm leaving the transportation of our medi-gel and water supplies to you.

"Questions? No? Outstanding. Let's move!"

* * *

[1] IED: Improvised Explosive Device


	7. Chapter 7

**VII**

Lights raced past Akiban's vision as she sat in the front passenger seat of one of the hijacked aircars. She had just forced another ration bar down her throat, much to her stomach's disapproval, and she had even managed to keep it down so far—no thanks to the turian's driving, though. Of the four Marines cramped into the back row of seats that was designed for three, two had already lost their last meals.

It seemed to help to focus on simple things. Whenever Akiban let her mind wander, her condition seemed to worsen; she started seeing things, and her head threatened to burst while her stomach returned everything back to sender. But now, counting the buildings as they flew past the side window, she experienced a sense of stability. At least she didn't sense any palpable deterioration.

Only when Varelius pulled over and opened the canopy of the sleek limousine did Akiban realize that they had arrived at their next destination. Soundlessly repeating the lyrics of one of her favorite songs, she swung herself out of the landed aircar and looked around. She realized that if she survived this, that song would forever be tainted with the memory of feeling like shit.

Despite the darkness, Akiban could see the shapes of bodies on the ground. Nobody had bothered with removing them. The spacious square was littered, literally, with the dead. Replaying the events of the fighting here in her mind, Akiban could tell what had killed them: The mass accelerator impacts had left empty craters with bodies forming ring-shaped concentrations around them, while grenades had riddled the colonists with shrapnel, dropping them dead where they had stood. More bodies were piled up where they had been crushed against the Makos or shot by Marines. Looking down the road to the south-east, Akiban could even discern the path of havoc the tanks had plowed through the masses in their desperate flight from the city and its colonists.

Even the wreckage of Three still lay where it had landed on its roof, apparently untouched since the battle. It surprised Akiban that the colonists had not tried to recover the vehicle, since it appeared to still be largely intact, and they certainly had had more than enough time to do so.

The canopy of the second stolen aircar with Nakata, piloted by one of the quarians, opened, and Connor pretty much fell out of it, gagging. She would have vomited had there been anything left in her stomach. The other passengers also evacuated the vehicle, two of them leaning over her, trying to help her somehow.

"We need to get inside," Akiban called. "Nakata, breach the door! Olson, Omar, you take point!"

Leaving two guards outside to guard the aircars, the ragtag band of Marines, quarians, and a turian entered the administration building after Nakata had bypassed the door's lock mechanism. The first room was empty, the reception desk was deserted—proximity sensors showed no contacts. Akiban left two more guards at the entrance and sent Marines to the other doors of the room.

"Nobody enters or leaves this room!" Akiban called. "The ten-minute rule still applies. I suggest you don't sleep at all, though. If you experience headache, dizziness, nausea, or similar, try to occupy your mind with something you're familiar with, something you know by heart. Hell, I don't know—recite the field manual, go through the lyrics of your favorite songs, solve simple mathematical problems, whatever does it for you! It'll keep your brains on track!

"We've made considerable progress in our mission schedule in the past few hours! We're now entering the final stages of preparation, and all of this will be over soon! Hang in there, Marines!"

The lieutenant turned to face the turian. "Where is the VI core?"

"I have the blueprints of the building," Varelius announced.

"You'll lead me there," Akiban ordered. "Nakata and Omar, you're coming with us. Miller, I'm leaving you in charge here until we're back."

"Yes, ma'am," the corporal confirmed.

After following Varelius through a series of corridors and down several flights of stairs, Akiban, Nakata, Omar, and Kela—who had insisted on coming along—finally arrived at the security door that led to the VI core chamber. They encountered nobody on the way there, and even the sensors remained clear; the building was completely deserted, yet power was still on.

"Breach the door, Chief," Akiban ordered, pointing at the heavy hatch.

Nakata fired up his omni-tool and got to work, opening the door seconds later. Beyond it lay a small rectangular room, roughly five times ten meters wide and two levels high. Ladders connected the ground level with catwalks above. It was dominated by a large cylinder in the middle that extended all the way from the floor to the ceiling—the VI core itself. The entire design suggested to Akiban that this was the original VI core module that had been installed in the colony ship.

"Omar, close the door and guard it," the lieutenant ordered once everyone had slipped inside. "Chief," she then said, nodding toward the core.

"On it."

Akiban winced when she saw Kela take a scan of the area with her omni-tool. Of course a colonial administration support VI wasn't exactly secret state-of-the-art tech, and the technologically adept quarians could hardly learn anything new from those data, yet this exposure of Alliance systems made Akiban feel naked in front of the aliens. She doubted that they would be equally open and cooperating were this one of their colonies or ships or wherever they lived. She couldn't change it now, though, and she certainly wouldn't go and try to break the data out of Kela's omni-tool. This powerlessness was frustrating.

The shape of a life-sized, androgynous humanoid who was holding a scale in each hand appeared in front of the cylinder as Nakata looked up from a holo-display. It had no hair and a nondescript, almost featureless face, which added to its overall eerie appearance.

"I am Balance." The holographic projection articulated the words, but the sounds came from elsewhere, probably speakers installed somewhere in the room. "How may I assist you?"

"I am Lieutenant Akiban, Seventh Frontier Division, Tenth Infantry," the lieutenant introduced herself. "Balance, I want you to run diagnostics on your systems and to report your status."

"The VI core framework is functioning within standard parameters," the avatar reported dutifully. "However, I do not seem to be able to access any of the colony's systems. Likely reason: The VI core has been manually disconnected from the colony network."

"I see," Akiban muttered. "Balance, what is the standard procedure in the case of an enemy attack on the colony?"

"The VI will continue operating to support the civilian infrastructure and the defense of the colony if deemed necessary. Should the VI databanks contain data classified as sensitive or secret, I am tasked with preventing this data from falling into enemy hands; contingency measures include the deletion of such data or, in the case of an emergency, a complete wipe of the VI databanks."

Sometimes Akiban had to remind herself that VIs weren't real people and therefore couldn't die. Not that it made them any less uncanny. "Balance, are you familiar with the VI of the local garrison fort?"

"Affirmative."

"Are you familiar with its cyber-warfare capabilities?"

"Not in detail. It is safe to assume, though, that its military-grade cyber-warfare suite and computation capacity are superior to mine."

Akiban squeezed the bridge of her nose between thumb and index finger of her left hand. "How long could you resist its hacking attempts?"

"I do not have enough data to make a reliable projection."

Varelius shook his head. "Lieutenant, even if Balance could defend itself for long enough, the fort VI would just cut access to the aircars. We are going to have to install additional firewalls in Balance's systems as well as in the vehicles."

"Warning!" Balance said. "Altering the VI core systems requires level four access."

"I am a Spectre," Varelius said.

"Unable to verify Spectre status" the avatar said indifferently. "There is no data on currently active members of Citadel Special Tactics and Reconnaissance in my databanks. At present, I am unable to access external sources to obtain a verification of your claim. Possible solutions: Obtain permission to access and modify the VI core from authorized personnel, or reestablish planetary extranet uplink."

"This leads us nowhere," the turian concluded. "I suggest we shut down the VI and restart the core in maintenance mode. That should enable us to hack into the system and make the necessary modifications."

"Warning, unauthorized access and modification of the VI core are illegal according to Alliance law and punishable by prison terms of up to five years. For further reference, see Systems Alliance Penal Code, Book Three, Article Two Hundred Seventeen, Paragraphs—"

"Oh, shut it already," Akiban snapped. "For sanity's sake..."

"Lieutenant?" Nakata shot her a questioning glance.

"Do it, Chief. Force shutdown and make the modifications."

"Yes, Lieutenant. Spectre, I'm gonna need your help."

"Of course," Varelius confirmed and walked over to Nakata to assist him with the core.

Akiban turned back to the door, grimacing at the ever stronger headache, and took a long sip of water. Five years in prison didn't sound too bad compared to the legal shitstorm her other actions would precipitate. Manslaughter. Insubordination. She snorted a laugh. It was like a bad story written by a real asshole. If there was an author, Akiban decided that he deserved a kick in the balls. A hard one.

"Lieutenant, I need to speak with you," Kela said quietly, approaching.

Akiban sighed. "What is it, Kela?"

"In private," the quarian added.

After checking the proximity sensors on her HUD and making sure the far side of the door was clear, Akiban gestured to Kela to follow her. She opened the hatch and stepped out of the room, closely followed by the quarian girl.

"There is something I think you should know," Kela said when the hatch had shut again. "The turian, the Spectre, he's lying to you, you know."

This would be interesting, Akiban thought. "Please do explain."

"How should I put this? The device we are looking to take out is not of geth origin. And the turian knows it."

"I don't understand."

"Ask yourself this, Lieutenant: How would the geth, who are synthetic, create anything that can affect the minds of living beings in such a cunning way? You must understand that the geth can never understand us the way we can understand them. We can learn the algorithms to understand the mathematical foundation of their programming. The thinking minds of living beings are not restricted in the same way; they are a realm the synthetic entities cannot access.

"The obvious conclusion is that the geth could not possibly have created this device. We are dealing with a much more advanced technology here, created by someone who has a much deeper understanding of sentient minds than the geth could ever hope to achieve."

Akiban thought about Kela's words and her mind threatened to reel again, her head on the verge of dizziness. "But the husks..."

"Yes, the husks," Kela said. "I know that they've always been connected with geth activity in the past. But what do we really know? My people created the geth a long time ago, and even though much of our knowledge has been lost, nobody else in this galaxy knows as much about them as we do. Yet even we have been unable to establish a connection between husks and known geth technology; all evidence is circumstantial at best. Besides, even if husks are geth tech, it does not mean that the device shares the same origin."

More questions, more mysteries. Akiban shook her head. All of this was ridiculously complicated, and she had no reliable intel whatsoever. Even if what the quarian claimed was true, what did it really change about their situation? The device had to be taken out, no matter where it came from. Varelius lying? She had never trusted him to begin with, fully expecting him to be withholding information at the very least—he was a Spectre, after all.

"I appreciate you telling me this, Kela, but there's nothing I can do about it. We need his help. We need yours, too. And I'm pretty sure that you and Varelius need mine and that of my Marines. Like it or not, we're all in this together."

"I just hope we won't come to regret trusting him," Kela said in a low voice, her gaze directed at the floor.

"So do I," Akiban said, putting a hand on the quarian's shoulder. "Come on; let's go back in before they start thinking we're plotting some scheme against them."

"Yes, you're right."

Inside, Nakata and Varelius were just about to restart the VI again.

"It took some improvising, but we've made the modifications necessary to make the VI cooperate with us. It'll now recognize all of us as Spectres," the chief announced.

"Good job," Akiban acknowledged.

Looking up from the holo-display, Varelius said, "I've installed additional firewalls that will protect Balance from the fort VI—at least for a time. More importantly, the firewalls are adaptive and will extend throughout the network along with any of the VI's operations. That should also protect our aircars from getting hacked."

Akiban nodded. "Nice."

"Lieutenant, this is Miller." Comms. Heavy breathing.

"Go ahead, Corporal," Akiban replied.

"Uh, shit, I... Connor just shot herself."

"What do you mean by 'shot herself'?"

Nakata frowned, linking his own comms into the conversation.

"I don't know. I... I wasn't looking her way. I heard a shot and she was dead. Fuck, she put a round right through her head!"

Akiban swore. As if things weren't bad enough, now her Marines were shooting themselves. She swore again. "Okay, listen. I don't want anyone to be alone. Go from person to person and talk to them. I don't care what they look like or how they feel. Keep checking on everyone!"

There was a long pause. "Okay. Will do. Hey! Hey, cut it out! Shit!"

"Miller, what's going on?"

No response.

"Great." She cut the channel. "I need to know what the hell is going on up there. Chief, Spectre, you two finish here. Omar, you stand guard. Kela, you're coming with me."

Akiban had memorized the way as part of her mind occupation regimen and needed less than half a minute to rush back to the entrance room. What she found there was chaos. Costa was pressing McKenzie against a wall while Miller was on top of Arden, pinning her fellow fire team leader to the floor near the reception desk—she was bleeding from the corner of her mouth.

"Okay, what the fuck is going on here?" Akiban shouted.

"That son of a bitch fucked my wife!" McKenzie screamed.

Akiban covered her face with her right hand. "What?"

The usually calm medic was distraught, close to tears. "That bastard!" he sobbed. "That goddamn bastard!"

Akiban shook her head. "Let them go."

Reluctantly, Miller and Costa released Arden and McKenzie.

"You two, on me," Akiban ordered.

The fire team leader and the medic stepped in front of her.

"Attention!" she barked and they assumed the ordered stance. She turned away and asked Miller, "What happened here?"

"I'm not sure," Miller answered, her eyes fixed on the lieutenant. "They were chatting, and then they suddenly started fighting. I tried to separate them, but they wouldn't stop." She wiped blood from her face. "We had to employ force."

Akiban turned back to face the two at attention. "Who started it?"

"It was me, ma'am," McKenzie admitted, eyes straight ahead.

"Let's just ignore the fact that you attacked a superior non-com for the moment, Marine. What the hell were you thinking?"

"I... He was telling me things. About my wife. I didn't knew they... They were..."

"Is this true, Corporal?" Akiban asked.

"I don't know. I don't know his wife! I swear I only saw her once—they were saying goodbye when we were embarking on Arcturus. But now I suddenly remembered those things. Hell, I don't know. I recognized her from seeing her there. I never knew her name, but now I know it. It's... It's all so strange."

"What do you remember exactly?"

"It's all just blurs, her lying next to me in bed, that tattoo... But I was never there! I don't know! I... It's confusing. I asked McKenzie about it, and then he snapped."

"You bloody bas—" McKenzie was starting to say but Akiban stopped him with a raised hand.

"Shut it!" she barked. It was crucial that she managed to restore her unit's integrity now. They were slowly falling apart, had possibly already crossed the line beyond being operational. She had to give them something, anything.

That moment Nakata, Varelius, and Omar entered the room. "We're good to go," Nakata announced.

"One minute, Chief," Akiban said without looking at them. "Corporal, Private, what I think is happening here is that the device is messing with our memories. The Spectre warned us about this. Maybe it's affecting us collectively, not only individually. Whatever the reason, your reaction was unacceptable. We're on a mission here. I won't have my Marines fighting each other. If I ever see something like this again, I'll make you wish the enemy had gotten you first." She looked around. "That counts for everyone. At ease."

"What happened?" Varelius asked.

"Don't worry," Akiban said. "Situation's under control."

"If you say so."

"I say so," she hissed. "What's the news?"

"The VI is back up and fully cooperating," Nakata reported. "We've reconnected it with the network, and everything seems to be working. It's not been attacked by the fort VI yet. Further, I've updated our comm channels. We can now communicate with the VI over a dedicated channel that uses the new encryption."

Akiban activated her omni-tool and checked the new channels, which evoked a content nod. "Okay. Nakata, I want you to acquire a full list of registered vehicles in the colony and have the VI start moving them to the square in front of the building; prioritize fast craft. Get me as many as you can."

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"Spectre, I want you to load the mass effect bombs we'll use to attack the fort into the vehicles. Program them to detonate on impact."

Varelius nodded.

Akiban looked around the room and spotted Connor's body on the ground. "Miller, the tags."

"Aye," Miller confirmed and handed the lieutenant Connor's dog tags.

Akiban looked at them for a short moment, her mouth dry, and put them into the pouch in which she kept the others. She hoped that it wouldn't fill up any more than it already had, but something at the back of her mind told her that this hope was unrealistic.

"Let's get moving!" she shouted after a long moment to break the sullen silence that had taken hold of the room.

"The bombs are ready," Varelius said as he approached Akiban.

She was standing at the top of the stairs in front of the administration building, looking down at 358 aircars lined up in rows on the wide square below. It was dawning already, and Akiban had sent out perimeter guards, but so far no colonists had shown themselves.

"Very good," she said absent-mindedly. Kela's words earlier gave her no rest, but she had to force herself not to think about them. Thinking brought her mind dangerously close to the edge of reeling out of control. This is my rifle. There are many like it, but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. Ha, that was good. She knew that one by heart.

"Are your Marines ready for combat?" Varelius asked.

Akiban looked around. There was no one within earshot. "If they feel anything like me, they'll fight. Judging individual conditions is harder, though. Physically, the stress has been minimal so far; we've had worse during basic training. But the device doesn't seem to influence everyone equally. I feel like crap, but I can keep my shit together. Connor blew her own brain out. You don't seem to be affected at all."

Varelius tilted his head to the side. "Oh, don't worry about me, Lieutenant. It is affecting me as well. I just don't show it."

"Oh, you have no idea how much better that makes me feel," she said, mimicking his tone.

"I'm glad I could help," he said not too seriously.

"Yeah, I bet."

"Anyway, there is something you should consider. I think you should evacuate some of your Marines from the city, especially those who have been with you since the dish. They have been exposed to the device for longer and at a higher intensity than those who came in later as reinforcements. The suicide of, what was her name? Connor is a warning sign we can't ignore."

Akiban thought about his suggestion for a moment. It would mean sending Nakata, Miller, Arden, and McKenzie away, leaving her only with Omar, Olson, Senega, and Costa. And there was of course the implication that she herself should also leave, leave the mission to Varelius, leave the Marines who would remain in the city to him, leave the quarians at his mercy. No. She wouldn't do that. Even if she wasn't in charge and in control of the situation, her presence and actions served as a catalyst for the convergence of greater forces. She was needed—and she needed her Marines.

"We're all going," Akiban finally decided.

The turian's mandibles twitched. "I cannot agree with your decision."

"I know."

"I've heard that humans were stubborn," he said, looking out over the masses of aircars. "I always thought that was just prejudice based on biased perception of a species-wide mentality. You, however, never cease to prove me wrong."

She grinned half-heartedly. "Thanks."

"Maybe one day you will realize that stubbornness will not always serve you best. The galaxy is bigger than humanity. The inflated self-confidence of your kind is more likely to make you enemies than friends. That's something you might come to regret in the future."

"The Council seems to think otherwise."

"The Council has decided to judge your entire kind based on the decisions of one man. I wonder if they had still been there to pass that judgment had you been in Shepard's position."

Akiban laughed and put her right hand on his left shoulder, leaning in close to the turian, almost hugging him. "I guess we'll never find out," she whispered in his earhole and slapped him on the armored shoulder. "It's time we got going."

"You're right. We should get moving."

Akiban set her comms to transmit on the new channel she had created for everyone who would be participating in the assault. "All hands, this is Akiban. Gather at the administration building for final mission briefing. Akiban out."

Nakata and Kela were the first to arrive as the rest of the ragtag unit gathered at the bottom of the stairs.

"Balance has been briefed on the plan—approach parameters, formation, evasive actions, priority targets for the vehicles carrying mass effect bombs, everything I could think of, really," the chief reported.

The lieutenant nodded.

"We have distributed the remaining supplies and what we managed to recover from the Mako wreckage here among the aircars we'll be in," Kela said.

"Thank you, Kela."

The quarian nodded.

Akiban started counting. Miller, Miles, Arden, McKenzie, Omar, Olson, Costa, Senega, that made eight Marines—plus Nakata next to her, nine—three quarians and Kela next to Nakata, thirteen, and Varelius, fourteen, fifteen including her—complete. She walked down the stairs and positioned herself in front of the Marines and quarians waiting below, helmet on her head, arms akimbo.

She took a moment to look at each of them. "I'm not one for big speeches. I prefer to get the job done and talk about how fun it was afterward. And I fully intend to talk about how fun it was this time! All of us are going in there, and all of us are getting out!

"My intention is to infiltrate the garrison fort and to make use of the chaos that our diversion will cause. The Spectre will take care of getting message off world, so we don't need to worry about that. The rest of us will target the geth device and put an end to its influence.

"We will embark on the aircars in pairs—except for the Spectre, who will be flying alone. Kela's people will man two vehicles, Nakata is coming with me, Miller and Arden with Bomb Alpha, Miles and McKenzie with Bomb Bravo, Omar and Olson with Bomb Charlie, and Senega and Costa with Bomb Delta. As we approach the fort, you will keep to the rear of the formation and use the aircars in front of you for cover. Once we're above the fort, the VI will crash the aircars carrying those mass effect bombs that have been programmed to activate on impact into priority targets; the remaining unmanned aircars will crash-land all over the fort's inner perimeter.

"Our priority is not to stand out! We need to blend in as best as we can, and that starts with the landing! You're gonna come in hot and land as hard as you can so the enemy won't be able to tell crashing dummies from manned vehicles. Once on the ground, you will disembark and get as far away from your aircar as you can. As I said, try to blend in. There will be Marines wearing Phoenix and Onyx hardsuits, and maybe other equipment. Blend in. Blend in. Blend in. Don't engage unless you absolutely have to!

"As soon as you're clear of your vehicle, you need to zero in on the device. It's emitting a unique energy signature your omni-tools will be able to pick up. That's where we'll regroup and proceed to take the thing out.

"Once that is done, our primary objective will be to get our asses out of there. Ideally, we'll be able to capture one of their vehicles and use it for evac. Maybe we'll even be able to destroy the fort's defensive emplacements on site. However, I can't make any predictions because we simply don't know what the situation will be. Personally, I think planning ahead at this point would just narrow our opportunities down. Instead, I want everybody to keep their eyes open. Use your comms and let us know what you're seeing.

"I also want all of you to keep in mind that we're expecting the adverse effects the device is having on all of us to cease once it's out. So we all have something nice to look forward to.

"Questions?"

There were none, only sullen silence.

Akiban took a step closer to the others in front of her. "This is not a suicide mission! I will bring every single one of you back; even if that means that I have to haul your asses out of there personally." She looked at the quarians. "And I mean everyone! We are leaving no one behind! No human! No turian! No quarian! Have I made myself clear?"

"OoRah!" Nakata shouted.

"OoRah!" the Marines repeated.

"Damn right!" Akiban called. "Mount vehicles! We're launching on my mark!"


	8. Chapter 8

**VIII**

Akiban swung herself into the aircar Nakata had chosen for their ride and, shields active, strapped into the front passenger seat.

"Seal the canopy," she ordered.

He did.

"The bombs are in our hands, so I'm not worried about that," Akiban said. "But I don't trust the turian with the message. Do you still have the unaltered version of the program?"

"Yeah, I got it in my omni-tool."

"I'll go straight for the device. You will find the nearest shuttle and install your version of the program in its systems. Don't take any chances."

He nodded slowly. "Aye, ma'am."

"I won't be able to cover you, Chief. You'll be on your own."

"I understand."

She put a hand on his shoulder. "We'll do this. This plan is so fucking crazy that it will go down in military history once Ops Command learns what's happened here."

He managed a laugh. "Yeah, I always wanted to be remembered as history's craziest platoon non-com. I'm sure the Fleet will be proud."

"It better be. I'm not doing this twice."

He laughed again, coughed, and almost vomited.

"Morand, this is Akiban," she commed after setting up her comms so only he could hear her.

"I read you, Lieutenant. Go ahead."

"Chief, we're about to attack the garrison fort, so these are likely my last orders to you. Since I can't guarantee success of our operation, I'm ordering you to stay alive at any cost. You must find a way to establish contact with anyone approaching the colony and warn them about the situation here. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Lieutenant."

"Good."

"Lieutenant... It's, uh, it's been an honor."

Akiban smiled in spite of her agonizing headache. "That is has." She took a deep breath. "One more thing, Chief. This affair will draw an investigation in its wake. Feel free to blame me for anything that would get you in trouble."

"I can't..."

"That's an order, Chief! The dead have no use for honor anymore. But those Marines out there with you are gonna need everything they can get if they want to keep their careers after this clusterfuck of a mission. Get the intel out of here and blame everything on me if anyone gives you any crap. Do you understand?"

"I... Yes, Lieutenant."

"Good man. Semper Fidelis, Marine. Akiban out."

"Are you sure about that?" Nakata asked.

"I'm salvaging what I can, Chief. A lot of shit happened here under my command. Besides, it won't hurt anyone. The last of my family died on Eden Prime. You know that. My brother was with the Second Frontier, his wife and their twin-daughters were visiting from Earth. Fucking good timing. They arrived just in time to be there when the geth tore the place and everybody in it to bits."

"I know," he said.

"Let's stop crying rivers, then." She activated her comms. "All hands, this is Strike One actual. Report ready according to designated call signs."

"Strike Alpha ready." Miller.

"Strike Balance ready." Obviously.

"Strike Bravo ready." Miles.

"Strike Charlie ready." Omar.

"Strike Delta ready." Costa.

"Strike Echo ready." Kela.

"Strike Foxtrot ready." Another quarian.

"Strike Shadow ready." Varelius.

"Strike One actual, copy that. All Strike elements are reporting ready. Battle plan is go. All elements, execute staggered launch! Strike One actual out."

Akiban watched the hundreds of unmanned aircars rise into the air and speed off toward the garrison fort. After all of them had lifted off, she indicated Nakata to punch it.

The sleek two-seater rose to an altitude of about fifty meters and accelerated, pressing both Nakata and Akiban into their seats. The roofs of the colony's buildings raced past below them, blurring into lined patterns, and soon the airfield and the garrison fort behind it came into view. Warnings about restricted airspace lit up on the aircar's HUD, demanding course changes. Nakata ignored them and slightly increased their altitude, bringing unmanned aircars ahead between the rapidly growing turrets in the distance and their own vehicle.

More warnings exploded all over the HUD as the fort's VI attempted to hack the aircar's computer. Akiban hoped the firewalls would hold. If not, this would be a very short offensive.

"Incoming fire!" Akiban called and braced herself as the lights of missiles' rocket propulsion engines rose from the fort and accelerated toward the formation.

Aircars started falling out of the sky like burning meteors as they hit the defensive barrage. At closer range, the gun turrets opened fire as well, riddling the air with a web of contrails, indicating light automatic mass accelerator fire. More aircars were hit and spiraled out of control, torn apart by missiles or perforated by slugs.

They dove into the wall of smoke and flying shrapnel. Their aircar was hit and the canopy cracked, something bounced off Akiban's shields, but the vehicle kept going.

"You okay?" Nakata shouted past the sound of air that hissed into the cockpit.

"Yeah!" she called back. "Just set us down!"

Among waves of aircars raining down on the fort's inner perimeter, Nakata landed after a steep descent. The impact almost knocked them out.

Akiban unstrapped herself and kicked against the canopy's frame, forcing it open just far enough so she could squeeze through the gap and into the open.

She failed to suppress a smile when she saw the havoc the turian's mass effect bombs had wreaked. The fort lay in chaos. Even in spite of the smoke and the dust in the air that limited visibility, Akiban could make out the shapes of destroyed vehicles, ruined buildings, and deformed bodies lying on the ground. Armored Marines and support crews ran about alone or in groups, frantic, searching for some sort of threat, trying to make sense of the situation. Somebody was barking orders in the distance, the voice barely audible over the blaring of an alarm signal. Finally something had gone right—as right as attacking ones' own people could get.

Forcing herself to focus on the task at hand, Akiban hurried to the other side of the crashed aircar and dragged Nakata out of it.

"We've got a job to do, Chief," she barked, shaking him out of his daze.

"Yeah, yeah," he moaned. "I get it."

Quick steps behind her. She almost froze, only her hand slowly sliding toward the grip of her sidearm.

"Do you require medical assistance?" a voice called.

"No, we're—" Akiban coughed. "We're good. Just barely managed to dodge the thing." She dragged Nakata to his feet and turned around.

There were two medics standing there, both wearing Phoenix armor, both of them huge bulks of humans. There was something odd about their eyes, though, hard to place, detached.

"Medic!" somebody yelled in the distance.

"Get moving!" Akiban called. "We're fine."

After inspecting Akiban and Nakata one more time, the two medics nodded to each other and turned away. Just as their faces were disappearing behind the edges of their helmets, Akiban thought she could see a yellow glow in their eyes; she cringed at the sight of it, as the feeling of icy hands gripping her spine almost paralyzed her.

"Creepy," Nakata managed to say after a long moment of silence.

Akiban nodded, licking her lips. "Yeah. Come on. Let's go."

They split up and Akiban activated her omni-tool, scanning for the anomalous energy signature that would lead her to the geth device. Assuming it was a geth device. To the device, then. Whatever. She shook her head. Her omni-tool did, in fact, pick something up, a signature that no Alliance equipment could generate. Not an engineer herself, Akiban decided to trust the tool's judgment and set a waypoint on her HUD.

There was an awful amount of dust in the air considering the ground had been frozen hard less than an hour ago. Yet the waypoint was pretty much all Akiban could see in the homogenous brownish gray that dominated her vision. She dodged a formation of Onyx-armored Marines, roughly two squads that emerged from the soup somewhere on her left, and continued on her way.

Grimacing, Akiban clenched her teeth. Every step she took sent a vibration through her body that made fiery pain explode from the base of her skull into the rest of her head. She could already tell that her vision was blurring as she kept losing focus of the elements of her HUD. Sometimes the waypoint doubled and one of its clones wandered off into her peripheral vision, forcing Akiban to squeeze her eyes shut painfully.

Dragging herself forward, step by step, Akiban thought left when she moved her right foot and right when she moved her left foot. She knew it was wrong, but the wrongness of it had something reassuring. It distracted her from the urge to lie down where she was and curl up in a fetal position. It was as if a voice was whispering in her head, trying to convince her that surrender would be easiest. And while she wasn't one for easy, she knew it was true. She coughed, gagged, and vomited all over herself, still moving forward. Left! Right! Wait, wrong foot. That was the right foot when she thought right. It was supposed to be the other way round. Or was it? No, the inversion was the whole point. She had to listen to herself. Or rather not, in fact. That was crazy.

Gagging, hunched forward so she could barely see ahead, Akiban almost bumped against the door of the hangar in front of her. She screamed in pain as her stomach and abdominal muscles cramped. Convulsing, she leaned against the door.

"Lieutenant?"

Akiban didn't look up. "What?"

"You okay?"

"Guess," she muttered.

It was Senega, mass effect bomb tucked under his arm. He helped Akiban to straighten and looked into her eyes from up close. "I made it here with Costa. Miller and Arden got their bomb here, too, but they're unresponsive. McKenzie and Miles are dead—their aircar got taken out. Nakata is appearing fine on the HUD, but he's not responding. I haven't seen the quarians.

"We had to take out four guards here at the hangar. No further resistance."

Akiban needed a long moment to make sense of what he was saying. "Okay."

"Orders, Lieutenant?"

"Proceed as planned. Take out the device." Akiban slumped against the door and moaned. "Go!"

"Aye, Lieutenant. Omar! Breach the door!"

Akiban noticed little of the hangar door opening. She was carried inside and deposited at a wall on the left in a sitting position. Then more armored shapes were being carried in, probably Arden and Miller.

Forcing herself to look around, Akiban lifted her head. The hangar itself was largely empty, except for a black and blue object about twice the size of a Mako. She had never seen anything like it before. It looked smooth from where she sat, compact and yet not, with solid tentacles extending in patterns that were none. Enveloped in an aura of blue light the device was oddly aesthetic, beautiful, sublime even. Akiban felt her entire attention, her focus, all of her mind being drawn into it, as if it was absorbing her very essence. Soothing voices promised relief, comfort—if only she let go. They beckoned her to surrender herself, not to resist, to just allow it to happen.

And she wanted it to happen. She wanted to be released from her misery, from her pain, her struggle. She wanted it to be over. Muscles slacking, Akiban's head dropped so the chin guard of her helmet came to rest on her chestplate. She closed her eyes.

Only moments later—or was it hours?—a loud noise made Akiban snap awake. She had no idea where she was or what she was doing here, but she was fairly certain that Marines couldn't fly. It was as if a black eye with a blue iris was holding two armored bodies in the air. A biotic singularity.

"What the..." she muttered, looking for the source.

She recognized the shape of an exosuit, arm extended toward the singularity, pistol in the other hand. A quarian biotic? That was new. Two armored shapes lay motionless at her feet.

"I cannot let you do that!" the quarian shouted.

Akiban tried to drag herself to her feet, but her body didn't respond. And even if it had, she didn't know what to do. She was so confused.

"Screw you!" A human voice from the right. Fully armored. Shotgun trained at the quarian.

Before the human could fire, the quarian spun around and extended her arm in his direction. The armored human was hit by a wave of blue light and went flying. He crashed against the wall several meters from where he had just stood and slumped to the ground, motionless.

Akiban's mind screamed at her to do something! But she didn't know how to respond. Even as she managed to reach for her sidearm, she didn't know who to shoot at. The quarian certainly wasn't on her side, slapping around Marines like that. But the Marines weren't supposed to be here. They were trying to harm it. It. The device! The core! They were trying to destroy it!

Finally managing to get a firm grip on the weapon holstered at her right thigh, Akiban scanned the room for targets, but there didn't seem to be any Marines left standing—and the quarian appeared to be in control of the two in the air. Her gaze wandered to her right again, where the other Marine lay, his shotgun out of his arm's reach. Somebody should disarm him, she though, just in time to see his omni-tool come to life.

And then it dawned on Akiban, her eyes snapping back to the device. The mass effect bombs! Two of them were in place, attached to the bulky core element. The Marine would destroy the device and all of them with it!

Panicking, Akiban felt new strength shoot into her body. She unholstered her pistol. With a shaky hand she aimed it at the Marine at the wall and pulled the trigger, again and again, until the weapon overheated and wouldn't even spit another round. Akiban couldn't tell if she had hit him, but as most of her body still refused to obey, she threw the pistol in his general direction.

Even before the spiraling sidearm hit the ground, the hangar was bathed in blue light and Akiban knew it was over. Cascading waves of blue tongues of energy licked the walls of the room, followed by a blazing flash.

The light show was uncharacteristic for a rapidly expanding mass effect field, but Akiban was even more surprised at the fact that she still lived to wonder about it. She stared ahead, puzzled, and realized that the HUD had vanished from her visor.

The singularity evaporated and the two floating Marines hit the ground with a thud, landing partially on top, partially next to the other two below them.

Numbness abating, Akiban dragged herself to her feet, leaning against the wall for support. The dizzying haze that had clouded her thoughts only moments ago yielded to clarity, followed by a salvo of crushing realizations. The quarians had betrayed them; it was the only reason why Kela would try to prevent Nakata from destroying the device. Nakata... She had shot him—or at him, at least. And the turian had betrayed them, too. He had never intended to destroy the device. That was why he had given them those four specific bombs, she realized: They weren't bombs but some sort of elaborate disruption devices, probably generating an impulse similar to a tech-overload. He wanted to preserve the device in spite of everything that it had done, in spite not knowing anything about it and the danger it posed!

Regardless, the device was out of the picture—at least temporarily. And that was something Akiban could tell for certain. The headache was gone, the nausea had vanished. While she felt sore all over and her stomach was dominated by a ravenous hunger, it was still as if she had been reborn compared to her condition minutes ago.

Akiban pulled her assault rifle from her back, but the weapon refused to extend. Dead like the rest of her equipment. Great. She put the weapon back and started across the hangar in Nakata's direction.

The chief had not moved since triggering the alleged mass effect bombs. Leaning over his motionless body, Akiban could smell medi-gel and see that his armor was cracked on the left side below the chest.

"Chief!" she barked at him. "Nakata!"

He twitched, coming around, and groaned.

Akiban opened a small covering plate at the back of his armor's collar and hit a switch to manually release a dose of medi-gel; it was an emergency mechanism installed for the case that the armor's medical sensors or automatic injection and dispersal system failed.

"Am I dead?" His voice was low but even.

She collapsed to her knees, laughing while tears shot into her eyes. "Not yet." After everything that had transpired, Akiban was so happy that he was still alive that she felt silly when the initial wave of relief ebbed away.

"The turian fucked us, didn't he?" Nakata slowly asked.

"Hard," she confirmed. "Can you walk?"

He nodded. "Yeah. Help me up."

She did.

"What now?"

"Did you complete your mission?" she asked him.

He forced a smile. "You know me."

She patted him on the shoulder—gently, for once. "Good man."

"Vel, Pag, take care of them!"

Akiban spun around and saw Kela pointing in her direction, as two quarians ran toward her and Nakata. This would be ugly. With all weapons and shields cooked in the blast, the fight could only turn into a nasty brawl. Akiban suspected that the quarians were hoping for an easy victory over the exhausted Marines. She intended to prove these hopes unrealistic.

Stepping in front of Nakata, Akiban pulled her knife from its sheath on her left shoulder guard and exhaled slowly.

The quarians skidded to a halt only barely out of her arm's reach, suddenly less confident in their superiority. Their exo-suits offered some protection against a blade, but there were enough soft spots where the weapon could penetrate, potentially causing severe injuries or at least a crippling contamination.

"Chief, check on my Marines," Akiban ordered.

"Aye."

As he moved, Akiban kept repositioning herself so to remain between Nakata and the quarians. Vel and Pag—she didn't know who of them was who—moved closer tentatively, but they retreated as soon as she swung her knife at them.

"I should have killed you when I had the chance!" Akiban shouted past them at Kela.

The female quarian snorted. "It's nothing personal, Lieutenant."

Akiban reversed the grip on her knife. Although the device was taken out, the quarians made no move to stand down. It seemed to her that whatever they were planning wasn't over yet.

Vel and Pag backed off further as Akiban was joined by two more Marines. Arden and Miller were back on their feet, standing at the lieutenant's side, knifes in their hands.

Kela uttered something in Quarian and started running toward the heap of four armored bodies on the ground.

"Arden! Stop her!"

The corporal started to move, and even Nakata began limping in the direction of the unconscious Marines. As one of the male quarians shifted to intercept Arden, Akiban used the space between the aliens to throw herself at him. She tackled him in the side and drove her blade into his exosuit where she suspected his ribs. Both fell to the ground, the quarian with a gurgling sound.

"Vel!" the other quarian shouted even as Miller charged him.

Akiban pulled her blade out of Vel's twitching body and stabbed him again, on the same side but slightly lower, and twisted the knife. He finally went limp with the nauseatingly crunching sound of the blade ripping through bones and organs.

Pag's scream indicated Miller's victory and was followed by a massive blast from the hangar door. The resulting shockwave was powerful enough to throw Akiban off the dead quarian. She skidded over the ground and rolled several times before finally coming to lie on her back, her knife gone. Ears ringing and lungs on fire from the rapid change of pressure, Akiban looked at the door. It was completely deformed, and Marines and husks were streaming into the hangar through the gaping hole the explosion had torn into it.

"Take cover!" Akiban shouted and scrambled to her feet.

Half-ducked she sprinted for the inactive geth device and dove behind one of its tentacles, small arms fire cutting the air all around her. Miller came flying into cover right behind her, a mask of pain on her face, clutching her right arm close to herself. While obscuring her body from the enemy's firing solutions, Akiban crawled along the tentacle until she reached the main bulk of the device. There she sat up, leaning against it with her back, trying to come up with some sort of way out.

On her left, Akiban could see three more shapes running for cover. Senega and Costa were dragging Nakata along with them; the chief's arms were slung around the shoulders of the other two men, his legs skipping steps as they ran. Akiban was consumed by the sole hope that, since they hadn't been hit yet, they would make it. Come on, she thought. Run! Suppression fire would have been better than her silent pleas, she knew, but what was she to do without weapons?

Then Nakata's hip exploded. Senega and Costa were knocked to the ground on either side as the chief's body went flying one way and his leg another, dozens of meters through the air, both fragments partially vaporizing in red flames. What remained of the body came down somewhere in the back of the hangar. There was no way he was still alive.

With a last-ditch effort Senega hurled himself over the tentacle in front of him. Costa was slower in getting back to his feet. His body language indicated that he intended to jump as well, but instead he slumped down and didn't move. Akiban could see that his visor was cracked and splattered with blood.

She swore and quickly peered around the corner, snapping back into cover immediately. Omar and Olson were nowhere to be seen, while dozens of husks and Marines were approaching slowly, apparently careful not to harm the device. The closest of them were about twenty meters away. So much for the effects reversing once it was taken out, Akiban thought.

She reached into her ammo pouch and removed her last grenade. The palm-sized, disk-shaped explosive was coated with a serrated shrapnel layer. More importantly, though, it had a mechanic detonator in addition to the electronic remote-trigger system. That meant that it was still operational. If she armed it now and held on to it, she would go out with a painless bang four seconds later.

"Lieutenant!"

Akiban tore her gaze away from the grenade and looked past the prone Senega on her left. There was Kela, waving at her and shouting.

"I have a way out!" the quarian called. "Use your grenades! I can get us all out of here if you can only buy us a little more time! What are you waiting for? Hurry!"

Akiban returned her attention to the grenade in her hands, tightening her grip around it. She had no other means to kill herself quickly enough to prevent capture by the enemy.

"Senega, where's Arden?" she called.

The private looked up and shook his head.

"You still got grenades?"

"Two!" Miller called.

"Same here!" Senega moaned.

"Use them!" Akiban barked. Should the worst come to pass, her grenade would be enough to kill all three of them. She was determined not to let any more of her Marines to fall into enemy hands.

"Fire in the hole!" Miller and Senega screamed almost simultaneously and threw their grenades over the tentacles they were hiding behind.

The grenades detonated, sending shockwaves and shrapnel through the hangar. Akiban coughed and took another quick glimpse around the device to assess the damage. Bodies lay on the ground, both humans and husks, and several Marines were crawling in various directions, groaning in pain. But reinforcements were already streaming in through the destroyed hangar door and pressing forward toward the device.

"Again!" she shouted.

"Fire in the hole!"

Another pair of detonations. The grenades cut down another wave of enemies and killed those who had survived the previous two. But it wasn't enough. More and more Marines and husks kept streaming into the hangar. Without weapons the situation was completely hopeless.

"Get over here!" the lieutenant shouted.

"Keelah! Use that grenade!" the quarian wailed.

Akiban ignored her and silently urged Miller and Senega to hurry as the two Marines started crawling from their flanking positions to where she was hiding behind the device.

"What are you doing, you bosh'tet?" Kela screamed, her voice cracking.

Breathing heavily, Miller and Senega reached Akiban's position and rose from their prone stances to crouch next to her.

"Capture is not an option," the lieutenant said firmly, indicating the grenade in her hands with a nod.

Senega's eyes widened. "You wanna blow us up?"

"I'm not becoming a husk!" Akiban said, emphasizing each word.

"Yeah, but..."

"We're running out of time," Miller said in a low voice. She had resigned herself to her fate.

Akiban took a deep breath. She unsealed her helmet from her armor and pulled it off her head. "Semper Fi."

Miller also removed her helmet, but Senega—eyes still wide—dropped on his buttocks and scrambled away backward toward the back wall of the hangar.

The initial impulse to stop him wasn't enough to get Akiban moving. Her heart was pounding slowly, yet with an intensity that made her feel each beat in her temples. Only now did she realize how exhausted she was, both mentally and physically. It was as if she was now getting the bill for the exertions of the past hours, for the fighting and the struggle against the influence of the device. With a deep breath Akiban removed the safety cover, her thumb wandering toward the trigger release.

As Miller was leaning in closer to ensure maximum effect of the grenade, the ground trembled and the hangar was rocked by a quake, followed by an ear-tearing screeching sound. The following air blast struck even Akiban and Miller, who were mostly shielded by the device.

Removing her finger from the trigger release, Akiban lowered the grenade and peered around the device. What she saw made her brow rise. A civilian yacht had crashed through what remained of the hangar door and torn through the Marines and husks inside. There was nobody left standing. The yacht had crushed or smashed everyone and everything in its way under or with its sleek white fuselage.

The ship rose slightly above the ground as its mass effect fields recovered from the impact and started yawing to port. It only stopped and remained hovering there when its bow was facing the hangar and the stern, with its lateral propulsion segments, the device. The rear loading ramp unsealed with a hissing sound and opened. Not waiting for it to come down all the way, Kela jumped out of her cover and started sprinting toward the ship.

"Maybe we should try to get on board," Miller suggested.

Akiban nodded. "Let's go!"

Mobilizing what little strength was left in them, the two Marines launched from behind the device and followed the quarian. Akiban's lungs burnt and her shoulder ached, turning every step into an agony all of its own, but she ignored all of it, her mind solely focused on reaching the ship. Everything else had blurred into haze of irrelevance. There was no platoon, no responsibility, no colony, no geth device, and no _North Cape _survivors. The ship. Only the ship.

Grenade still in her hand, Akiban had barely reached the bottom of the loading ramp when she spotted Kela, who had entered the ship moments earlier. There was a second quarian inside, approaching Kela from the bow, and she was frantically shouting something in their language. The second quarian produced a shotgun from a holster at the small of his back, aimed it in the direction of the boarding ramp, and pulled the trigger.

All Akiban could tell was that she hadn't been hit. With nowhere else to go, she continued forward, throwing her grenade at the two exo-suited shapes about twenty meters deeper inside the ship while expecting a lethal hit any moment. Yet instead of firing first, the untrained quarians dove for cover. Now, almost drowning in adrenaline, Akiban rapidly closed the distance to her opponents, who were still waiting for the explosion of the grenade; an explosion that would never come—Akiban hadn't armed the grenade before throwing it.

Targeting the armed quarian first, Akiban tore the shotgun out of his hands as he lay on his stomach behind a crate, still waiting for the blast, and shot him in the back. The weapon, something that looked vaguely like an Elkoss Combine Scimitar, was obviously illegally modified. Not entirely cooled down from its last shot yet, the weapon overheated, leaving Akiban exposed to a charging Kela.

The quarian tackled Akiban right below the hip. As they fell, Akiban's unprotected head hit the deck hard, and for a moment all she could see was star-littered darkness. The shotgun went skidding away. Knowing that Akiban's head was the only place where she could harm her, Kela started ferociously hitting and clawing at her face. She was stronger than her lithe physique suggested, her attacks drawing blood as a punch split Akiban's lip and another lacerated the skin above her right eye.

Akiban slung her left arm around Kela's waist and held her so close to herself that the quarian was unable to use the full range of motion of her arms, and thus couldn't land a decisive blow. While her attacks were painful, they were only causing superficial damage.

Another punch came down, and Akiban rocked her head to the side. She twisted her body violently, bringing Kela off balance, and finally threw her off. Instead of removing herself from Akiban's reach and trying to use her better condition to her advantage, Kela threw herself at Akiban again. This time, though, Akiban kicked out and hit Kela square in the helmeted head. The quarian toppled backward and failed to get back on her feet, her sense of balance obviously impaired by the blow. Akiban dragged herself upright and walked up to the tumbling quarian. She punched Kela in the stomach as hard as she could. Kela cringed, her upper body instinctively snapping forward as the air shot out of her lungs. Akiban turned the quarian's head to the side and locked it in place with both hands, and kneed her in the temple. Although the helmet cushioned some of the blow, the kick came with such force that Kela slumped and went down immediately.

Breathing heavily, her strength completely spent, Akiban didn't dare to relax. She had to finish Kela before the quarian regained consciousness. She doubted that she'd win another brawl like this.

Slowly dragging herself across the deck to where the shotgun had landed, Akiban's mind was bombarded with thoughts she was too tired to process. The device was disabled but structurally still intact. And the rest of her platoon and the _North Cape _survivors were still out there. And somebody had to help the colonists and the Marines at the fort; they couldn't be left like that. Maybe she could put the ship to good use; maybe it was a way out. She sighed. First things first: the shotgun and the quarian.

She found the shotgun near a crate and leaned down to pick it up, but then an odd feeling spread from the back of her head and the deck came closer, and everything went dark.


	9. Chapter 9

**IX**

As she awakened, Akiban stretched her limbs and arched her back, yawning heartily. She knew that something was wrong, but she didn't really care because she was ridiculously comfortable. The soft surface she lay on and the warm air around her were so stupefying that she didn't even want to open her eyes; somehow she feared that if she did, she would be torn out of this bliss and dropped back into the looming abyss at the edge of her awareness, a place she didn't want to go.

After stretching again, Akiban took a deep breath that turned into another yawn. She scratched an itching spot of skin just below her right collarbone, grinning at the satisfaction of it.

"Good morning, Sleeping Beauty."

Akiban's eyes snapped open and her head jerked to her left, toward the source of the female voice she had just heard. She found herself lying on her back on a twin bed in a spacious and lavishly furnished bedroom. The woman who had spoken sat in an armchair, facing the bed, her back to a desk at the wall. She had her legs crossed and her arms folded across her chest, and she was completely naked. From what Akiban could see, she guessed that the woman was in her early thirties; her shoulder-long, dark brown hair hung loosely down the sides of her head, framing a round, soft-featured face that fit with a pale-skinned body of similar attributes.

Frowning, Akiban looked back at her own body and saw that she was naked as well, and even her dogtags were gone. Her athletic physique was the very antithesis of the other woman's. The situation was so bizarre that it took Akiban several long moments to assert the reality of it.

"Never seen a naked woman before?" the other asked.

Akiban made a face. "It's just been a while since I've woken up next to one with no idea where I was or how I got there."

The woman smiled warmly. "Who are you? Where are we? Why are we naked?" she said as if quoting Akiban's thoughts. She didn't make the impression of having been affected by the device.

"About that, yeah." Akiban sat up slowly and looked around the room. "You don't happen to have anything to wear, do you?"

"They took everything away when they first locked me in here, even the bedsheet. The door is still locked, by the way—in case you were wondering."

"They?"

"Quarians." She leaned back in the chair. "I am Jessica Rynes, by the way."

"Sarah Akiban."

"Pleased to meet you."

"Mhm," Akiban hummed. "Where are we?"

Rynes pursed her lips. "We're aboard my ship, the _Ex Astris Scientia_."

"A white yacht, 'bout forty meters long?"

"Yes, a Cord-Hislop _Imperio_-class yacht."

So they were aboard the ship that the quarians had crashed into the hangar. "You're not gonna like what the suit-freaks did to the paint."

"What do you mean?" Rynes asked.

Akiban's stomach growled. "They crashed the ship through closed doors into a hangar."

"That must have been the vibrations," Rynes concluded.

"When was that?" Akiban asked.

"Shortly before they brought you here—maybe two hours ago."

Two hours. Akiban craned her head back and closed her eyes. Two hours. She needed to know what had happened while she was out and where they were. The ship couldn't possibly still be near the garrison fort; the enemy would have certainly torn it apart by now. But they couldn't be far from the colony, either, or the orbital defense satellite would have taken them out. They had to be somewhere near Balance Point.

"Can we access the ship's systems from here?" Akiban asked.

Rynes shook her head. "The quarians took out all the equipment in this room: the intercom, the holo-interface; even the shutter controls are disabled."

"How many quarians are there?"

"I'm not sure," Rynes admitted. "There were several of them when they hijacked my ship. There was only one bringing me food and water for at least a day or two. And there were two of them when they brought you."

"Those who brought me, what did they look like?"

Rynes took a deep breath. "A male and a female. His exosuit was gray and black and green, I think, with a patch on his leg—looked like emergency repairs. The female's suit was black and red, kind of, and her visor seemed to be cracked a bit."

Kela and Lago. Akiban concluded that she should have kicked Kela harder. And she should have left Lago to rot. Instead, she had ordered McKenzie to treat him. Now McKenzie was dead and the quarian bastard was still alive. What was more, he must have knocked her down when she lost consciousness in the cargo hold. Akiban wanted to kick herself for being so sloppy and losing track of him.

"Did you see any other humans?" she asked.

"No, only you," Rynes replied.

Shit. Akiban pressed her left hand violently against her face. That neither Miller nor Senega were on board meant that both were dead—or worse. That made Akiban the last survivor of those who had attacked the fort, well, except for Varelius perhaps, but she really hoped the damn turian had bought it as well.

"How about something to eat?" Akiban finally asked. She had barely felt hungry after waking up, but now her stomach seemed to have realized its emptiness.

"Sorry, the quarians ransacked the place. There's nothing left in here."

"Great." She scowled. "And why the hell are we naked?"

Rynes rested her elbows on the armrests of her chair and folded her hands under her chin. "I have two hypotheses. The first is the more obvious one: Lack of protection and coincident exposure of the body have an intimidating effect and give our captors a certain aura of superiority.

"Second, and perhaps a bit far-fetched, I suspect that it's a show of contempt. Of course the quarians know that removing our clothes in a non-sterile environment doesn't have the same effect on us as it would have on them, but this seems to be a deep-rooted, perhaps subconscious act of exposure to hostile environment."

Akiban slipped from the bed and paced around the room. "Contempt," she repeated. "I understand why they'd feel that toward me; I killed two of them. But why you?"

Rynes shrugged.

Shaking her head, Akiban inspected her left shoulder, which still ached. The quarians had even torn off the bandage that had supported the wounded joint. While the medi-gel had done most of its work, Akiban now saw that the scarring had ruined parts of her tattoo. "What were you doing here, anyway?"

"I'm a xenoarcheologist," Rynes said. "I work for the Alliance's Science Division. I was here on business."

Akiban stopped her pacing and turned to face Rynes, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "The Prothean artifact."

"Well... Yes."

"Allegedly Prothean, that is," Akiban added sourly. Obviously Miss Rynes was reluctant to share information. The question was whether she had something to hide, or if she was simply protecting herself.

"And what brings you here?" Rynes asked.

"Me and my platoon got here on an Alliance frigate a few hours ago, investigating reports of geth activity. It didn't turn out so well."

Rynes bit her lower lip. "Is the frigate still in orbit?"

"No. It's been destroyed."

"Destroyed?"

Akiban tilted her head to the side, wondering about the other woman's sudden attentive inquisitiveness. "The orbital defense satellite got her."

Rynes's mouth turned into a thin line and her face became an unreadable mask. But her eyes... Hadn't Akiban know any better she would have suspected a flash of relief in them.

"Did you manage to send a distress call?"

Akiban wished that once, only once, she would meet someone she could trust, someone she didn't need to manipulate or withhold information from. "No. The Parrin FTL comm buoy was unresponsive. We acquired the reset codes but never managed to transmit them."

"I see."

Two hours. Akiban didn't know what the condition of the buoy had been when Nakata had installed his program on the shuttle's systems, but the distress call should have been out regardless of it by now. Nakata was dead. Even without closing her eyes Akiban could see his half-vaporized body spiraling through the air.

"Are you all right?"

Akiban realized that she was staring emptily at the closed shutter above the headboard of the bed. "You know, not so long ago I swore to gruesomely murder the next person who asked me that."

Rynes smiled. "I'd rather you didn't make good on that. In return, I promise not to ask again."

Scratching her scalp with both hands, Akiban noticed a nasty bump on the back of her head. The damn quarian had gotten her good. If she ever got her hands on him, she'd make him regret the day he had messed with her. And then something dawned on her. "Say, where was this ship all the time?"

"I landed it on the civilian strip of the airfield between the colony and the garrison fort," Rynes answered. "That's where it was when the quarians captured me and locked me in here."

Of course, with the drive core offline and its transponder disabled the ship wouldn't appear on sensors. But Rynes must have checked in with airspace control and with Balance. The VI would have known that the _Ex Astris Scientia_ was in the colony; all Akiban would have needed to do was ask, and perhaps the entire assault on the garrison fort would have been unnecessary. A ship like the _Ex Astris Scientia_, one that cost about as much as half a squadron of fighter craft, definitely had powerful comm systems that could have been used to reset the comm buoy. All those Marines would still be alive had she only been more present-minded and inquired about civilian ships. She buried her face in her hands. Suddenly she felt incredibly tired. And stupid. And incompetent. Maybe it had been the influence of the device that had narrowed her perspective so that she had missed viable options; but that possibility wasn't particularly comforting—more than half of her Marines were dead.

Knowing better than to ask if Akiban was all right, Rynes tried to move the conversation ahead instead. "So, what's the plan?"

"That depends. What do you want to do?"

"How about we start by retaking my ship?"

Akiban shrugged. "Well, private property isn't really any of my business," she muttered and walked over to the bed and sat on its edge. Of course she wanted the ship. It was a way to get off this cursed rock. There were still obstacles, like the defense satellite and the fort's squadron of interceptors, but if they managed to get past them, it'd only take about nine hours of FTL flight—that was how long it had taken the _North Cape—_to reach the Juno Lagoon mass relay. From there they could reach Arcturus in two jumps. Arcturus. Safety. Medical assistance for the wounded Marines and crew. An investigation of the events on Balance Point. Prison.

"I can pay you," Rynes said.

Akiban looked at her, raising an eyebrow, and pointed at the tattoo on her right upper arm, the insignia of the Systems Alliance Navy Marines. "I'm not for hire."

Rynes pressed her palms together. "You may want to reconsider that, Marine. I can pay you handsomely. All I want is control of my ship. All that stands between that and me is this door"—She pointed at the entrance—"two quarians, and my obvious lack of combat training."

Biting her lower lip, Akiban quietly admitted to herself that she was tempted. This close to the Skyllian Verge, enough credits could take her anywhere. And she had no intention of spending the rest of her life—or any portion of it, for that matter—in a prison facility. Even if she managed to blame the device for the colonists' behavior, and thus portray her orders to fire at them as self-defense, she'd still have to answer for insubordination and explain the deaths of over half her platoon's Marines. And while she was no expert on the legal bit, she simply saw no way how this could possibly end well. She knew she had made mistakes. If she was part of the investigation committee, she'd probably lock up the platoon leader in question for good. But Akiban wouldn't let herself be locked up; not if she could help it, anyway. She felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to leave everything behind and disappear.

Yet she couldn't just shed her responsibility. Some of her Marines were still out there. She had to get them and the _North Cape _survivors out of this mess. She could start worrying about herself when that was done. Besides, she hoped that she could still find some possibility to make an inconspicuous exit should it become necessary.

"How much are we talking about?" Akiban finally asked.

"I can give you access to an account that isn't tied to my name. There are still some hundred thousand credits on it. It'll be all yours, and I don't care what you do with it—as long as we've never met."

Now that Akiban found curious. Why would a xenoarcheologist have access to an anonymous account? And why would she insist on not having been seen? Somebody of her status must have been in touch with people of the colony, or at least with the VI if with nobody else, especially if she was sent to investigate the device.

"Do I want to know what's going on here?" she asked.

Rynes sucked her lips into her mouth, then she said, "I don't think so. The less you know the better—for you."

Akiban leaned back on the bed and ran her left hand over her well-defined abdominal muscles. She was very hungry. "I don't think I can do that," she said, tapping her ear twice with the index finger of her right hand and pointing at the door. It was unlikely but possible that the quarians had bugged the room with listening devices or tapped the intercom to be warned in advance should their prisoners plan to escape. That was a risk she wasn't going to take. Any attempt to seize control of the ship had to come as a complete surprise. The quarians were armed, after all, and their exosuits offered better protection in combat than naked skin.

"I swore an oath to the Alliance," Akiban announced, maybe a bit too dramatically. She rose from the bed and joined Rynes at the desk. "I can't be bought. Besides, what are we supposed to do, naked like this? We'll just have to wait and see what happens. Maybe we can negotiate our freedom. We must have something the quarians want." She made a writing motion above the desktop.

At first Rynes looked at her, a confused expression on her face, but then she understood and rose from her chair. She walked across the bedroom and through a door on the side that revealed a small but cozy bathroom. Rynes disappeared inside and reappeared seconds later with a bottle of shower gel.

Akiban scowled and ran toward the bathroom, barely giving Rynes a chance to dodge out of the way. There she turned on the faucet and drank hungrily until the water tasted like ash and her stomach ached. When she was done, she killed the water flow and leaned against the shower cabin behind her, staring into the mirror above the sink. A sense of déjà-vu gripped her and she had to force herself not to shiver. The pair of eyes that looked back at her from a pale face was even more bloodshot than it had been in the turian's safe house. And she looked older than she had back then, almost gaunt. Akiban had never been one to care about her looks—it was not an observation out of vanity—but she had simply expected to be young for a while longer before the first signs of age manifested. She shook her head and turned away from the mirror. It was probably just her imagination playing with her perception. Of course she was exhausted, and of course she looked tired, but she hadn't suddenly grown old.

Akiban returned to Rynes—who had spilled the blue liquid on the black desk—and, using her fingers to draw letters into the blue liquid, she wrote, "quarians = armed.

"1 shotgun.

"female = biotic.

"amp cooked." She grabbed the bottle, poured more gel on the table, and drew a line, writing "door" under it. Then she pointed at the entrance and wrote, "behind it?"

"corridor," Rynes scratched into the gel and indicated a direction perpendicular to the door with an arrow.

Akiban nodded and poured more gel. She made an X on the far side of the door and wrote "quar," and she added a bent arrow from the X, through the line that was the door, and in to the side that represented the bedroom. After that she drew one X on the left side of the door and pointed at herself, continuing to draw another X on the right and pointing at Rynes. Akiban's index finger redrew the bent arrow, and when it reached the door, she hit her fist on the table. Finally she shot Rynes a questioning glance, looking for confirmation if she had understood the outline of the battle plan.

"Look," Rynes said, "If I had the training, I would have tried to fight my way out of here on my own. My offer still stands. I'll even drop you off wherever you want."

It took Akiban a while before she grasped the implication. She poured more gel and wrote "armed" and "unarmed," pointing at herself and at the former first, then at Rynes and at the latter. When the other woman nodded, Akiban motioned her to stand up and positioned her in front of the bed. She placed her right foot behind Rynes's feet, put her arm around Rynes so the woman's neck was squeezed between Akiban's forearm and bicep, and threw her over her hip and onto the mattress so hard that Rynes almost bounced back to her feet. Akiban jumped on top of her and mock-punched her in the stomach with the palm of her open hand, just hard enough to make sure Rynes felt it without hurting her or causing damage.

Rynes gasped as the air shot out of her lungs, and it took her several pained breaths to recover. "Are you crazy?" she hissed.

Not waiting, Akiban dragged Rynes to her feet and back to the table. She poured more gel and wrote, "never hesitate.

"hit abdominal area not head.

"palm open or risk fracture."

While the quarians lacked training in hand-to-hand combat, Akiban doubted that she could teach Rynes enough to best one of them; and that was assuming that the quarians hadn't managed to repair their weapons yet. But Akiban couldn't possibly engage both of them alone, assuming there really were only two. Too many ifs and only one chance to do it right. Akiban ran her hand over her face. They had to do it. Rynes only had to keep her opponent busy long enough for Akiban to incapacitate hers.

She walked back to the bed and placed herself where Rynes had stood before, waving her over. When Rynes stood in front of her, Akiban helped her assume the proper stance and establish the proper hold. Rynes tried to throw Akiban as she had been thrown, but Akiban flexed her muscles and didn't budge. Putting more strength into her effort, Rynes attempted to lift her off her feet, but she failed as Akiban adjusted her stance and refused to yield. Suddenly Akiban dove out of Rynes's grasp and spun around, shoving the other woman in the back so hard that she fell on the bed. She had to make Rynes understand that holding back would only result in defeat. In hand-to-hand combat, strength had to be used explosively to overwhelm a defense that wasn't ready to resist its effect. Unfortunately, this was difficult enough to explain with words already, let alone to teach quietly.

Even as Akiban was helping Rynes up from the bed, the door that connected the bedroom to the corridor opened. She spun around, and Kela and Lago stepped into the room, the latter training the Elkoss Combine shotgun at her.

"I hope we're not interrupting anything," Kela said in her outlandish accent. She was unarmed.

So much for the element of surprise, Akiban thought. "Not really."

"Good." The quarian threw two field ration bars on the floor at Akiban's feet. "We wouldn't want you to starve, now, would we?"

Resisting the initial urge to throw herself at the rations, Akiban tilted her head to the side. "What's going to happen now?"

"You're going to see soon enough," Kela dismissed and turned to leave.

Akiban had to prevent that at all costs. If the quarians left now, it could be hours before they returned. She wasn't willing to sit here all the time and do nothing. So she decided on a gamble.

"How are Vel and Pag?" she asked.

Kela stopped in mid-turn, and Lago took a step closer to Akiban, raising the shotgun from his hip to a more accurate firing position. "What did you just say?" he said in a dangerously low voice.

"You heard me, suit-kid," Akiban retorted. "How are your little buddies?"

"You bosh'tet!" Lago exclaimed and took another step toward her.

"Lago!" Kela called, "Let it go! She's just trying to provoke you!"

Akiban's mind formed a silent curse. Kela had seen through her scheme. She had speculated on provoking either quarian into hitting her, which would have given her the opportunity to disarm Lago or take Kela hostage and use her as a meat shield.

"Let it go, Lago!" Kela ordered.

"You're not worth the bandage my medic used to save your pathetic life," Akiban said, her voice even.

"Well, too bad," Lago scoffed, not moving. "Your little medic is dead!"

"Better dead than quarian." Akiban had to provoke him into getting closer without angering him so much that he just shot her on the spot.

"Well, that can be arranged!" Lago called. Another step closer. He was almost within arm's reach.

Kela stepped closer as well and put an arm on his shoulder. "Lago, don't be stupid. Dead they're worthless."

"Oh, I'm not going to kill her," Lago drawled. "But maybe she doesn't need those eyes, or those teeth, eh?"

"Why don't you take off that mask and say that to my face?" Akiban taunted. She almost had him there.

"Keelah, Lago! Don't be an idiot!" Kela pleaded.

"Yeah, don't be an idiot," Akiban scoffed, aping her tone.

That did it. Lago took another step toward Akiban and lunged out with the shotgun, preparing to hit her with its butt. Kela reacted immediately and reached for his arm to stop him. He was forced to interrupt his attack in order to shove her away. Even as his helmeted head was turning toward Kela, Akiban's muscles, which had been tense all the time, sprang her body into motion. She launched forward and had the muzzle of the shotgun pushed out of the way when the quarian instinctively pulled the trigger. With her left hand she grabbed his wrist above the hand that was holding the weapon and drove the open palm of her right hand hard into his stomach. The soft exosuit gave way, and Akiban could feel her hand sink deep into Lago's abdomen. Not waiting to observe the effects of her attack, she kicked for his leg where it was bandaged—which she regretted immediately when sharp pain exploded through her bare foot—and grasped his weapon arm with her right hand as well.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Kela approaching and Rynes throwing herself at the quarian girl in a clumsy tackle. Kela mostly evaded the attack but failed to dodge completely; she was engaged—that was all that mattered.

Akiban swung Lago's weapon arm over her head, always staying out of the shotgun's line of fire, and smashed his forearm against her knee as she was holding on to it with both hands. Something snapped, and the shotgun fell out of Lago's hand, clattering to the ground. Akiban performed a move similar to what she had tried to teach Rynes earlier and threw Lago over her hip, smashing him against the floor. Instead of continuing to batter the quarian, she jumped away from him and lifted the shotgun from the ground, aiming it at Kela, just in time to see her lock Rynes in a painful grip in front of her as a meat shield.

"I would say stalemate," Kela announced tensely.

Akiban pursed her lips as if thinking about the situation. "Not really," she said. "Let her go or Lago dies."

"If you harm Lago, I'll break her neck."

A feral grin spread on Akiban's face. "Just flex your neck muscles, Rynes. There's no way she can snap your neck when you do that."

"Are you sure you want to take the chance?" Kela asked.

Akiban answered by aiming the shotgun at Lago and pulling the trigger. The burst of pellets tore the writhing Lago to bits, partially vaporizing him. Kela howled something Akiban didn't understand, then her scream turned into sobs.

Rynes used the opportunity of Kela's slacking muscles to wrench herself out of the quarian's grip and to scramble away from her.

"Let's get to the bridge," Akiban said as she waited for Rynes to leave the bedroom. When Rynes was out of the room, Akiban followed her, shotgun aimed steadily at Kela, who had sunk to her knees, sobbing.

"Can you lock her in there?" she asked Rynes after the door had closed behind them.

Rynes shrugged. "I can lock the door. I can't guarantee that she won't be able to get out, though. You know, quarians..."

"Yeah." The last thing Akiban needed was Kela running around the ship with that quarian head of hers filled with ideas of vengeance. "We'll take her with us, then. We can still tie her up somewhere within sight." She opened the door. "Come on! Time for a walk."

Kela, still sitting where they had left her with her arms hugging her knees, made no move to get up.

For a moment Akiban considered giving the shotgun to Rynes and dragging Kela along herself, but she decided against it. Civilians and firearms made for bad pairings. Besides, Akiban was too exhausted to struggle with the quarian again; she was so hungry that she even had trouble standing.

"Look, I don't really want to shoot you, but I certainly won't give you a chance to escape. That leaves you with two options. One: You get to your feet and move it. Two: You keep sitting there and I blast you. Your call."

Kela spun her head to look at Akiban, but the gesture was defused by the fact that her mien was obscured by her visor. The sharpness of motion spoke volumes, though.

Akiban sighed. "Okay," she said and raised the shotgun into firing position, placing her index finger on the trigger.

"Wait!" Kela called and rose to her feet. "I'll come—if only to get a chance to kill you."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll see about that." Akiban motioned her to move and stepped away from the door as the quarian stepped through it and into the corridor, always staying out of her arm's reach. "Kela, to the bridge. Rynes, on my left, a meter behind me. If she starts leading us anywhere else, I want to know it."

"Sure," Rynes confirmed.

Almost dutifully Kela led them to the bridge, which was situated one level above the habitat deck and the bedroom. Akiban was glad that the way up was a staircase rather than an elevator or a ladder, as the latter two would have posed problems to watching over Kela.

Akiban stopped five meters away from the beige, wide round door with "BRIDGE" written on it in white, black-edged letters. "Open it and step back," she ordered.

Kela obeyed and touched the control panel on the right. The door slid open quietly and revealed a compact bridge with a comfortable-looking captain's chair in the middle, a pilot's station with navigation controls in the front, and lateral workstations at the bulkheads on the sides. Most of the declining front, the ceiling, and the sides consisted of a generous viewport, the view out of which was obscured by closed metallic shutters.

"Lie on the floor," Akiban ordered Kela. "Arms out on the sides." She didn't want the quarian to lock herself on the bridge with her and Rynes still outside.

Kela obeyed again and lay on the deck.

Akiban walked past her and cautiously peered through the door, first left, then right. There was nobody on the bridge, and none of the equipment showed any signs of tempering. She stepped inside and motioned Rynes to follow.

"Can I get up now?" Kela complained.

"Slowly," Akiban allowed. Without turning away from Kela, she asked Rynes, "Do you have something to tie her up?"

Rynes blew out her cheeks and exhaled loudly. "I don't know. I don't have any cuffs or anything. Wait. There should be some adhesive iso-tape in the emergency repair kit, you know, the stuff you put around those flexible patches to seal small hull breaches."

Akiban rolled her eyes. "All right, that's good enough. Tie her to the chair at the port auxiliary station. Make sure you tie her up good, arms and legs separately."

Without a confirmation Rynes set out to fetch the tape. A few minutes later, Kela was tied to the chair and Akiban finally dared to lower the shotgun; she had stood guard at an angle that would have allowed her to fire at Kela at any time without risking to hit Rynes.

"Where are we?" Akiban asked when Rynes stepped away from the quarian.

"Why don't you find out?" Kela challenged.

Akiban ran her left hand over her scalp. "Look, if we're surrounded by husks and open the shutters, it'll betray our presence aboard the ship. I'm not that stupid. Where are we?"

"Uh, Akiban," Rynes said. She was sitting in the command chair. "I don't think we're in Balance Point anymore."

"What do you mean?" Akiban asked.

"The FTL drive is engaged." Rynes opened the massive viewport shutter.

Akiban's jaw dropped, and the shotgun almost fell out of her hand. Beyond the viewport she could see the familiar patterns of particles hitting a ship's mass effect field in FTL transfer. "You've got to be fucking kidding me! Where are we? Where are we going?"

"We're three hours out from the Juno Lagoon mass relay," Rynes replied after the manipulation of a few controls on the command chair's left armrest produced several golden holo-displays in the air.

That was ridiculous. Akiban knew that it wasn't possible. The orbital defense satellite would have taken them clean out of the sky had they tried to leave the colony. And if not, the fort's squadron of interceptors would have destroyed the _Ex Astris Scientia_ even before she had made orbit. It just wasn't possible. "Are you sure?"

"It's what the navigation sensors say."

Akiban's hand wandered down her forehead until her fingers reached eye-level. She pressed the thumb and the index finger against her closed eyelids until it hurt. They had to get back to Parrin IV. Their business there wasn't concluded yet. Her Marines... The _North Cape _survivors... The device... If the quarians had somehow managed to leave the planet, then Kela could get them back. "Decelerate and turn us around."

"Are you sure?" Rynes asked, obviously reluctant. "We just barely managed to get away from there; and you want to go back?"

Akiban's eyes narrowed. "It wasn't a suggestion."

Rynes looked at Akiban for a long moment, assessing her determination, but then she put her hands up in the air in resignation. "Fine." She rose from the command chair and stalked over to the navigation station. "This is a bad idea," she muttered as she sat down.

Running the timeline of events through her mind, Akiban concluded that they should be able to return to Parrin IV within two hours. Once there, she intended to use the _Ex Astris Scientia_'s sensors to find the emissions of the remaining Mako's eezo core from orbit and go in low, within short-range comm range, to reestablish contact. That was assuming the Mako was still intact. If it wasn't, they would have to rely on visual data, and that could take a while. And all of that of course assumed that there was anyone left to pick up—and worth picking up. Maybe returning really was a bad idea. It would be much easier to just disappear now.

No. Akiban didn't know how these thoughts kept creeping up in her head. She was a lieutenant of the Systems Alliance Navy Marines, and she had responsibilities. Her own people were still down there, stranded, waiting for help. And she had the means to save them, all of them. Many of the wounded were still in dire need of medical assistance the medics just couldn't provide in the field. She had to try.

"I don't get it!" Rynes's words tore Akiban out of her reverie.

"What is it?" she asked.

Rynes leaned back in the chair at the nav station. "I tried to decelerate, but the ship won't respond to my commands. It seems to accept whatever I punch in, but nothing happens."

Akiban frowned and walked over to stand behind Rynes. "You better not be screwing with me," she said.

"You want to try?"

"How do I slow us down without killing us?"

Rynes pointed at a projected slider. "Pull this down gently to decrease the power output of the mass effect field. That will increase the ship's mass and slow us down."

Leaning over Rynes's shoulder, Akiban did as instructed. And indeed nothing happened. Instruments still indicated the ship's speed at the specified maximum of 1.3139 billion kilometers per second. No error message, nothing. "Is the interface locked?"

"No," Rynes said and demonstratively locked the interface, which the station's holo-displays acknowledged with red symbols in their top right corners. Rynes touched several of the controls, provoking no other response other than the flashing of the symbols.

Akiban scratched her left shoulder, realizing that she was still naked, and shook her head. "What could be causing this?"

"I don't know," Rynes admitted. "I don't think this is a malfunction. My credits are on sabotage—probably the quarians."

"Try to fix it," Akiban finally said after a long moment. "I need to eat something and get some clothes. I'll relieve you on the bridge when I'm done."

"Yes, ma'am," Rynes snapped with fake enthusiasm. "I hope you're at least an officer," she then muttered.

"Second lieutenant," Akiban called over her shoulder as she was walking toward Kela.

"I'm relieved!" Rynes drawled exaggeratedly.

Ignoring her, Akiban stepped in front of the quarian and asked, "Where's my stuff?"

"Why don't you go and find out?"

"Hmm," Akiban made, tilting her head. "I've come to a decision regarding you. I won't shoot you. That would be a waste of ammunition. I'll just expect unconditional cooperation from you. And if I get the feeling that you're not cooperating, or that you're bullshitting me, I'll just start removing parts of your suit. I heard your kind doesn't respond too well to that."

"Go suck entropy, you bosh'tet!"

Akiban sighed, stepped closer, and reached for Kela's visor. The quarian shrieked and tried to turn away, but Rynes had actually done an excellent job at tying her to the chair, and the iso-tape was made to withstand greater forces than Kela's muscles could mobilize.

"My stuff," Akiban repeated emphatically.

"In the hold!" Kela screamed, still trying to squirm. "Your stuff! It's in the hold!"

Akiban smiled and patted Kela on the helmet. "Good girl."

"Screw you."

"Ah-ah-ah," Akiban chanted, raising a finger. "Only good suitbags get a treat," she said, her tone as if talking to a pet. She slapped the side of Kela's helmet and turned away, leaving the bridge.

Although Akiban didn't know the ship's design by heart, she knew that the cargo hold was somewhere below the habitat deck at the bottom of the fuselage. Then again, the yacht wasn't big enough to get lost in. Ignoring the small cargo elevator, Akiban slid down a ladder and reached a door with "CARGO HOLD" written on it. She opened it and stepped through.

The door slid shut behind her, and Akiban's mouth opened as her jaw dropped without any conscious effort of hers. When her muscles unfroze, she hit the intercom panel above the door controls.

"Rynes, we've got a problem."

"Please specify."

Akiban swallowed. "The device. It's in the cargo hold."

"What?"

"You heard me," Akiban said evenly. "The damn thing is in the cargo hold."

"Is it active?"

Akiban stared at the alien object sitting in the middle of the hold. It looked exactly the same as it had when she had last seen it in the fort hangar. Its mesmerizing shape begging for attention, its form devouring the onlooker's eyes, the silent patterns speaking in an unheard language.

"Akiban?"

The tentacles that spread out from the device's main body were aligned in a formation that made them look as if they were reaching out for something, not moving, but beckoning to surrender to their embrace.

"Lieutenant?"

"What?" Akiban snapped, annoyed.

"Is the device active?"

"No." The lights were out, and Akiban could feel none of its effects. No headache. No nausea. Just hunger and weariness. "I don't think so."

A sigh of relief on the intercom. "All right. Hurry up with your stuff. I want to check on that thing myself."

"Right. Akiban out." She let go of the switch and started looking for her equipment.

Akiban found her armor and underwear discarded in a corner. Although they didn't smell particularly nice, she put on her shorts, bra, shirt, and socks, and started checking her armor. It was completely dead, and the chestplate, greaves, and boots had smears of vomit all over them. No matter how many times she tried to power it up, neither the omni-tool built into the left forearm bracer, nor the kinetic shields, nor the medical sensors, nor the medi-gel injection system came online. The turian's devices had fried all electronic systems. Damn him.

She sighed. After finding a cloth, she scrubbed as much of the vomit off the parts as she could, then put the armor on regardless. Even without shields it still offered some protection, and the medi-gel could be administered manually from the emergency controls at the top of the backplate. It was better than bare skin.

At least the medi-gel tank was still full; she hadn't used it since resupplying before the assault on the fort. Oh hell, that had gone wrong. She shook the thought off and continued her inventory. All of the omni-gel was still there, too, but without the omni-tool it was a loss. She was out of grenades, and all her weapons were gone, too, but at least she could finally holster the shotgun; the weapon slots worked mechanically. The helmet was intact, but without power there were neither HUD nor life support; she disconnected the cable at the back and clipped the helmet to her equipment belt. Finally, she opened the pouch that contained her field rations and wolfed down all three that were still in it.

With a smile on her face Akiban dropped on the deck and leaned against the bulkhead. After taking several long sips of water from her water tank, she closed her eyes and simply enjoyed the sensation of a full stomach without the necessity of having to keep the meal down. It was pure bliss. It felt so good that Akiban let her head drop back until it rested against the back of the collar of her armor and the bulkhead. She licked her upper incisors with a moronic grin on her face, one she was completely aware of but didn't care about. She scratched her scalp violently with both hands and yawned heartily.

Rynes was still busy at the nav station when Akiban returned to the bridge, and Kela was still where she was supposed to be.

"Made any progress?" Akiban asked.

Rynes shook her head. "Not really. I only have access to a few primary systems like sensors and life support, but everything related to propulsion, power, and the mass effect core simply won't respond.

"I'm going to get myself some clothes now. Maybe you can get something out of our quarian friend here. She refuses to speak to me.

"Want coffee?"

"Yes, please," Akiban muttered and waited until Rynes had left the bridge, subsequently returning her attention to Kela. "So, refusing to cooperate again, huh?"

The quarian spat a sardonic laugh. "I wonder if your human friend told you what she was doing in Balance Point."

"She did."

"Oh, really? And you're still helping her?"

Akiban sighed. "What do you mean?"

"Well, perhaps you would be interested in the fact that Doctor Rynes was the one who activated the device in the first place."

Careful now, Akiban thought. Regardless of what Kela was going to say, it was very likely to be the onset of another manipulation with the goal of seeding distrust and suspicion. Akiban had trusted Kela once—or rather not distrusted her enough; that was a mistake she intended not to repeat. "What are you yapping about?"

"Your friend, Doctor Rynes, activated the device. On purpose."

"Did she, now," Akiban said. "And let me guess: Next you'll be claiming that you're so trustworthy that it would be outrageous of me to require proof of you to support your claim."

"I have proof!" Kela exclaimed. "Keeran, the quarian you killed in the cargo bay—his omni-tool is still functional. There are surveillance videos and concurrent energy readings saved on it that prove that the device came out of its dormancy after Rynes manipulated it."

Akiban didn't even want to start imagining the implications of Kela's accusation. Once more she had entirely too little information to make competent decisions upon which to base any sort of action. She bit her lower lip. The day she was confronted with a readily comprehensible situation was the day the galaxy would stop spinning.

"Where is that omni-tool?" she asked.

"Keeran's body should still be in the cargo bay," Kela answered.

Akiban pursed her lips and nodded. "I might check it out. However, there are still a few things that are bugging me. Let's start with why the fuck the device is in the cargo hold?"

"Because we stole it, obviously," Kela replied smugly.

"Yeah, I didn't think it was the husks who dragged it into the hold for you because you asked so nicely.

"Why did you steal it?"

"The device is obviously highly advanced technology. We extracted it from the colony to move it someplace safe where we could examine it. We could have brought whatever knowledge we gained from it back to the fleet."

Kela's explanation sounded reasonable enough, so Akiban decided to leave it at that for the moment. "All right. So you intended to betray me from the start. That's good to know. So maybe we can start talking straight to each other now. What did you do to the yacht's systems?"

Kela remained silent.

"Do I really need to resort to threats again?" Akiban asked impatiently.

"It doesn't matter," Kela said in a low voice. "We can't change it now."

"We can't change what?" Akiban demanded.

Kela shook her head. "Lago expected that you would try to escape. He manipulated the systems. I don't know what he did exactly; that's not my expertise. But without his codes you won't be able to unlock the interface before the subroutine he installed terminates itself."

Akiban sighed. "And of course you don't know the codes."

"No. He was barely done when what we heard from the bugs we installed in the bedroom prompted us to check on you."

"Bloody civilians. Never heard of redundancy, have you?"

"Next time, I promise," Kela said sarcastically.

Akiban was just considering if—or rather how badly—the quarian was lying when Rynes entered the bridge. She had put on a gray jumpsuit with blue stripes on the sides of the pant legs and sleeves, heavy black boots, and an equipment belt. In her hands she was holding two cups. She walked over to Akiban and handed her one of the cups, then continued to the nav station.

"Thanks," Akiban said and joined her.

"Did you get anything out of her?" Rynes asked after sitting down.

Akiban sipped the coffee. It was black, strong, and full of sugar—in short, perfect. She hadn't expected such a tube cleaner.

"You like it?" the doctor asked.

"Yeah, it's good. Thanks."

"This is the fuel of ScD papers and pretty much any other scientific work across Alliance space. Just in case you were wondering," Rynes clarified.

"I can tell why," Akiban said after taking another sip. "As for the quarian: yes. She admitted that her late friend installed a subroutine in the systems that will apparently terminate itself once it's done its job. She didn't say what that was, though, only that we couldn't do anything about it now."

Rynes shot Akiban a skeptical glance. "You believe her?"

Akiban shrugged. "The hell I know. She could be saying the truth, or she might not be. Who knows."

"When I ran diagnostics before, it didn't find anything," Rynes said. "And I'm not anywhere near good enough with computers to start sifting through the system manually.

"What we could do, though, is initiate a manual emergency shutdown of the mass effect core. That would at least drop us out of FTL. Then we could scrub the entire operating interface and reinstall it from a backup copy. That should put us back in control of the ship."

Akiban considered that. "I'm not sure that's a good idea—this close to the Skyllian Verge and all. The region is highly unstable since the battle at the Citadel, even with Alliance space around the corner.

"Can't you reinstall the software without dropping us out of FTL?"

Rynes laughed out half-heartedly, shaking her head. "No, I can't do that. There are fail-safes in the system which prevent the ship from going FTL when neither a sentient pilot nor the autopilot are in control. Since the autopilot is offline, the quarian program must be simulating manual input. If I kill the operating interface, the ship will assume that the ship is rudderless and will decelerate automatically."

"Have you tried activating the autopilot?"

Rynes nodded. "Won't come online. The program must be blocking its initialization sequence."

"Great. Where are we going, anyway?"

"As I said earlier, we're headed for the Juno Lagoon mass relay."

Akiban craned her neck. "All right. So assuming the program is accurate enough to hit the relay—and smart enough not to crash us into it—we'll be on our way to the Exodus Cluster in less than three hours. And then what?"

"Maybe you should ask her," Rynes said, pointing at Kela.

Akiban did, and got no response. "This again," she muttered. "Rynes, do you have knife?"

The doctor's left brow rose. "A knife? What for?"

"Interrogation," Akiban said flatly. She'd had enough.

Rynes looked at Kela and her brow evened. "I don't have any blades, but there's an adjustable laser scalpel in the medical station at the wall."

"Sweet." Akiban walked over to the medical station and removed the casket containing the scalpel, and took it out. She activated it and depressed a small control at its side that produced a holo-display, similar to that of an omni-tool. Akiban set the scalpel to automatically readjust the focal point of the laser so to not cut through living tissue; she didn't want to physically harm Kela—not yet, anyway.

Scalpel in hand, Akiban approached the quarian. "You have exhausted my patience."

Kela remained silent, but Akiban had no doubt that the girl knew exactly what the scalpel was for.

"Your defiance is admirable. However, I just don't see where this is taking you," Akiban said as she squatted in front of Kela. "And I keep asking myself, what could be so damn sensitive about where we're going that she refuses to tell us? I mean, it's not like we could do anything about it, anyway. And yet you insist on not cooperating. And that, my dear Kela, makes me insist on wanting to know.

"Therefore, we're going to play a little game together. The rules are simple. I know that your suit can't seal automatically because its electronic systems are fried, just like my armor's. That also means that your suit won't kick in any medi-gel when it detects a wound or an infection. Needless to say that, tied to the chair as you are, you can perform neither task by yourself.

"I will ask you questions. And every time I don't like the answer, I will cut your suit. Do you understand?"

"You better kill me, Lieutenant," Kela said in a low voice. "Because I won't tell you anything; and if I survive this, I'll kill you."

Akiban nodded. "I'm sure you'd like that. But resolve is such a temporary thing. I've seen tougher people than you collapse to what I'm sure was less than what viruses and bacteria can do to you. We'll see."

With that Akiban moved the scalpel close to Kela's left leg, to a soft spot right above the boot. "Where are we going?"

"Juno Lagoon mass relay," Kela answered snappishly.

Akiban sighed and cut into the exosuit, opening a gash of about five centimeters. Then she moved the scalpel higher to another soft spot below the hips. "Very funny. Where is your program taking us?"

"You don't really think that a few cuts in my suit will make me tell you anything, do you?" Kela spat.

Akiban opened another gash. "Of course not. But I'm only getting started now, aren't I?" She set the scalpel to a spot on Kela's right side since the suit's fabric on her left looked sturdier and was harder to the touch. "Where is your program taking us?"

"Screw you."

"Okay," Akiban muttered patiently as she cut the quarian's suit again, this time producing a gash of over twenty centimeters just below Kela's right breast. "Where is the program taking us?"

Silence.

After another sigh Akiban raised the scalpel higher again and opened another gash right above where a human's collarbone would have been. Then she removed the medical tool from the quarian and rose to stand upright. The cuts in the exosuit would be inconvenient to Kela at best and were hardly an effective means of coercion, but then again, she was far from done with the traitorous alien. It was time to raise the stakes.

"Time to start round two," Akiban announced. "I understand that the cuts in your suit—while hardly desirable—aren't very persuasive." She activated the scalpel's configuration screen again and locked the laser's focal point relative to the device's position, turning off the living tissue safeguard. "This time every unsatisfying answer will earn you an open wound in your skin.

"Where is the program taking us?"

"You know, the universe has a way of coming back at people like you," Kela stated casually.

"We're in the same boat, then, little manipulator," Akiban said and knelt down. She drove the scalpel into Kela's left calf where she had placed the first cut in the exosuit. The girl made no sound even as her skin opened under the cutting light; the laser was probably killing off nerve endings before they could send impulses to the brain. The wound caused only minimal bleeding since Akiban wasn't cutting deep enough to damage any major blood vessels.

Akiban asked three more times and never received an answer. Each time she proceeded to open Kela's skin along one of the cuts in the girl's suit; and each time she felt a morbid satisfaction. Even though the torture—Akiban did realize that what she was doing was exactly that—yielded no results, she felt an odd compulsion to go further, a curiosity of how much the quarian could bear before finally giving in.

Still kneeling in front of Kela, Akiban turned off the scalpel and began spinning it in her hand, rotating it from between one pair of fingers to the next. "Unfortunately, you will only be spectating the next round," she told Kela and put the scalpel in her mouth, closing her lips around it and licking it with her tongue. After pulling it out, she started scraping the dirt out of the tread of her right boot with it. When the layer of dirt sticking to the saliva around the scalpel's handle was thick enough for Akiban's taste, she took it and stabbed it into the open wound in Kela's left calf. The quarian girl howled in pain, and she continued screaming even after Akiban removed the handle.

In spite of Kela's litany of protests, pleas for mercy, and insults, Akiban continued to stab the dirty handle into every cut she had inflicted on the quarian earlier. And although she tried her best to be as professional about it as possible, she couldn't help but admit that she found Kela's fruitless struggle against the iso-tape restraints kind of amusing. Akiban didn't think it was justice, but seeing the helpless quarian writhe in pain was satisfying, and she wanted to do much worse to her, wanted to punish her for her betrayal. Had Kela told her that she and her quarians were in possession of a ship, the assault on the fort would have been unnecessary—and all her Marines wouldn't be dead. Their faces kept haunting Akiban's mind even as she stepped away from the sobbing Kela.

"The rest of the game is really simple," Akiban explained after taking several deep breaths to regain mental focus. "Medi-gel for answers." Finally, she leaned in closer and ripped the visor from Kela's helmet. Ignoring the girl's screams, Akiban muttered, "That's not what I thought you'd looked like. Well, let's see what color that pretty face of yours has in two hours."


	10. Chapter 10

**X**

Gritting his razor-sharp teeth, Raman Varelius dragged himself through the door of his safe house. His body was bathed in medi-gel, though that helped very little against the sensation of his skin melting right off his back. He had remained cloaked for too long in the past three hours since the assault on the had fort begun, and he hadn't had enough time or opportunity to let his camouflage device cool down; one of the four heatsinks had melted as Varelius had dragged himself across the airfield toward the city, and the other three were simply taxed way over capacity. The camouflage field projectors were so hot that they heated the backplate of his armor they were worked into to a temperature that was so high that the inner padding couldn't absorb it anymore.

When the door had shut behind him, Varelius began ripping his upper-body armor off, ignoring the pulsing pain spreading from a crippling wound at his right hip joint. He had suffered it when something had exploded in the fort; the combination of electromagnetic radiation, a shockwave, and an entire wall of shrapnel had stripped his kinetic barriers right off him, and a fast flying piece of debris had penetrated his armor at the hip, torn through the hip joint, and exited in the back.

On a brighter note, Varelius had already completed his mission by then. For reasons he could not fathom, the FTL comm buoy had been ready and responsive when he had installed the program on the first personnel shuttle. Of course the program had not sent the message that the naïve human lieutenant had given him, but instead an altered one directly to Councilor Sparatus, containing a detailed mission report. The Alliance wouldn't learn what had happened here until the device was safely in turian hands. It was a shame that Lieutenant Akiban probably wasn't alive anymore, he thought, because now she would never come to understand the scope of how he had been playing her all the time.

Not only had he tricked her into believing that he was fully cooperating with her, but he had also managed to get her to deliver his tech-bombs right to the device at the expanse of the lives of all Marines involved in the assault.

In addition to that, he had managed to initiate his evacuation. Since he couldn't afford to wait for Spectre reinforcements, he had summoned an automated cargo drone he always kept nearby. It would land on the airfield, drop its crates, and be on its way again, hopefully without the interference of the colonists or Marines. If they were smart, they'd just leave it alone so not make anyone who might miss it suspicious. Varelius intended to sneak aboard during the unloading process, but the drone's arrival was still several hours out.

So far, his plan had worked almost perfectly. Although Varelius had never trusted the quarians, he realized that he had clearly underestimated their resourcefulness and audacity. He had not expected them to actually try to steal the device and, on top of all things, succeed. They had used the stolen yacht as a battering ram, mowing down any resistance inside the hangar, and managed to load the device aboard and clear out of the area before the enemy had realized what they were targeting. Varelius had tried to get on board, but with his wound he had been too slow to reach the ship before it lifted off again, safely making orbit with the device on board; he had barely managed to tag the ship with a homing beacon from the distance. While not ideal, the beacon would at least connect to comm buoys whenever it could establish an uplink; he could track those connections and thus narrow down the location of the ship—a simple yet effective method, and one unlikely to be discovered unless one knew exactly what to look for.

After producing a medikit from a hidden compartment, Varelius removed a regeneration patch from it and applied it to the burnt spot on his back, fixing it with a bandage; it would regularly secrete small doses of medi-gel to support the healing process of the wound. His hip was another matter, though. The wound probably required surgery—until then he would have to make do with medi-gel. Substantial amounts of medi-gel.

For the first time in hours did Varelius allow himself to relax and dropped into the armchair in the living room. The mutilated human medic still lay on the couch where they had left him, heavily sedated. Slowly Varelius rose to his feet and recovered the assault rifle from his discarded backplate. It expanded in his hands. He aimed it at the unconscious Vinne and briefly pulled the trigger, placing half a dozen bullets in the human's head. With the security risk taken care of, Varelius returned to the armchair. It was now time to get ready to get on the quarian's heels before they did anything stupid with the device.

Under the pretense of requiring a new omni-tool Akiban had returned to the cargo hold and searched Keeran's body, but the tool was gone. When she had confronted Rynes about the missing omni-tool, the woman had pleaded ignorance and had instead offered Akiban a spare Ariake Technologies Logic Arrest. Suspecting that Rynes had made the quarian's omni-tool disappear, Akiban had reluctantly accepted the replacement, and after almost half an hour of tinkering with the new tool, which was significantly more sophisticated than the standard-issue Bluewire, had finally gotten it to work. With the armor dead, the omni-tool was restricted to its internal power supply, and thus to its basic functions, but it was better than nothing, and still more than Akiban needed.

Approaching Kela, Akiban used her new omni-tool to scan the quarian's body temperature. The girl was already showing first signs of fever, and upon closer inspection the medical scan indicated that the wounds Akiban had inflicted on her seemed to be on a good way to getting infected. Akiban suspected that it wouldn't be long until Kela's condition deteriorated enough to make the girl cooperate in exchange for treatment; she didn't think the quarian was ready to die for whatever information she was withholding.

Contently Akiban killed the display of her new omni-tool and walked up to stand behind Rynes, who was still attempting to somehow regain control of the ship at the nav station.

"Any progress?"

Rynes exhaled forcibly and shook her head. "No. Thirty-seven minutes to the relay."

"Wonderful," Akiban commented dryly and turned away. If Rynes was truly responsible for turning on the device, then she had a lot of explaining to do. Maybe it had all been an accident, but Kela was claiming the opposite—or maybe Rynes had nothing do with it to begin with. Sometimes Akiban had the impression that most beings in the galaxy determined their own value by the amount of secrets they held or shady plots they were involved in. In the end, with no hard evidence there was no point in confronting Rynes, as she could just deny involvement. Besides, Akiban needed her to fly the ship.

Pushing these thoughts aside, Akiban sat on the deck cross-legged and removed the shotgun from its weapon slot on her back. After inspecting it for a long moment, she started disassembling it. She felt the need to know what the condition of the weapon was and how it had been modified, what kind of upgrades had been installed, and so on—essentially, if she could rely on it in combat. Like most modern small arms, the shotgun was simple to take apart to allow in-the-field maintenance and repairs; unfortunately, that also meant that anyone with half a brain and a pair of hands, claws, or tentacles could temper with it. After the three bolts were removed from the weapon's main body, the upper receiver came off easily, exposing the shotgun's inner workings. At first glance the weapon looked relatively new, and an omni-tool scan confirmed that assessment. But even though she wasn't a weapon tech, Akiban could tell that some clumsy modifications had been made to it. The stock upper receiver had been hollowed out—instead of installing a custom one—to make room for a high caliber barrel, and a rail extension that didn't exactly fit with the barrel had been installed, as well. On a hunch Akiban checked the heat sink and saw that neither the sink nor the conductors had been replaced; that explained the weapon's rapid overheating.

"Kela, Kela, Kela," Akiban muttered. "Whoever sold you this shotgun pulled you over the barrel pretty bad. The heat sink is still stock. There's no way it can absorb the heat generated by those mods. Don't you kids know anything?"

Kela remained silent, but Rynes asked, "Is that going to be a problem?"

"That depends on how long we'll have to make do with this gun," Akiban said. "Below-spec heat sinks lead to the weapon overheating very often. Since most of the components are made of some alloy or another, it causes them to expand and contract beyond spec tolerance, and that can lead to micro-fractures. And when the heat sink buys it, the weapon will fire only one more time before ending its career as a firearm and starting a new one as a club."

"Let's try not to get into any firefights, then," Rynes concluded.

"Yeah, let's," Akiban agreed and started putting the shotgun back together. Without the possibility of linking it to her HUD, she had no way of monitoring the weapon's temperature or the heat sink's capacity. Therefore, she had no way of knowing if the weapon would fire another shot when she pulled the trigger, and that could prove lethal in combat. Wherever they were going, Akiban hoped they wouldn't end up fighting.

On the other hand, Akiban was starting to get bored; that was a sensation she was largely unfamiliar with because she was a rather patient type, and even in moments of utter inactivity she usually managed to occupy her mind with something. Maybe it was the aftermath of consuming the caffeine and sugar bomb Rynes called coffee, or perhaps the simple fact that she was neither tired nor hungry. Something made her restless. Her entire body bristled to spring into action. Only then did she realize that her right leg was twitching, the heel of her foot hammering the deck.

"No more coffee for you," Rynes called over her shoulder.

Akiban jumped to her feet, her muscles contracting like overstretched elastic bands released at their ends. She almost flew the few meters that separated her from the nav station and barely came to a halt so not to crash into the chair occupied by Rynes. "I'm bored."

"I hadn't noticed."

"How long until we hit the relay?"

"Thirty-two minutes. Ninth time you're asking. You know that there's a watch in that omni-tool, right?"

Akiban shook her head. "Sorry." She didn't know what had gotten into her. Usually she had herself better under control and never gave in to such physical outbursts. Scratching her head with both hands, she turned away from Rynes and started looking around the bridge for something to do.

"You said your name was Akiban?" Rynes suddenly asked.

"Yeah."

"How's that spelled?"

"A-k-i-b-a-n."

"That's a curious name. Where are you from?"

"Born in Johannesburg, Earth."

"You don't sound South African."

"That's because I grew up on Arcturus Station." Akiban began punching her right palm with her left fist. "Look, I appreciate your effort at engaging me in small talk, but I'm really, really not in the mood."

Rynes spun her chair away from the nav console to face Akiban. "You look like you're in the mood to kill something with your bare hands. Do you want me to give you something to calm you down? I've got meds."

"Don't you dare," Akiban said. She felt full of energy, incredibly alive, so much, in fact, that she had the feeling of bursting any second. Out of impulse she darted ahead and started running. The door that connected the bridge to the staircase that led to the habitat deck barely had time to open before she shot through it. She sped down the stairs in a few leaps and sprinted down the corridor as fast as she could, past all doors of the habitat deck, until she reached the cargo hold access. Ignoring the ladder, she jumped down the shaft that led to the lowermost deck and burst into the hold. Not stopping, Akiban broke left immediately and raced down the starboard bulkhead. She wasn't feeling the weight of her armor, didn't notice the burning of her lungs, and registered the depletion of energy in her muscles only factually.

When she reached the closed loading ramp, Akiban didn't break off but instead scrambled up the steep surface until the inertia of her dash failed her and she began sliding down again. She hit the deck, rolled over her right shoulder to dampen the impact, and resumed her run as soon as she was back on her feet. The deck blurred under her as Akiban sprinted along the port bulkhead toward the bow. At the bow end of the cargo hold she broke right and went for another round.

Not bothering to count the laps, Akiban just kept running. She knew that she had to be tired; at the pace she was setting her muscles should have been completely exhausted by now. But she wasn't tired, or at least she didn't feel that she was. Her skin was bathed in perspiration, which also ran down her brow and into her eyes, burning.

Akiban stopped near the port bulkhead about halfway through the hold and rubbed the sweat out of her eyes and wiped it from her forehead. Not that it helped much, but at least the burning slowly subsided. She turned toward the bulkhead and started punching and kicking it. The alloy was too hard to give way to her attacks, which came rapidly and at full strength, and only thanks to her armor did Akiban not break any of her bones as she hammered against the solid wall.

Akiban didn't stop until the coating that gave the bulkhead its bright gray color was gone from the spot she had made her target. Finally she slumped against the bulkhead, more mentally than physically exhausted. The urge to fight, to destroy something had yielded to fear; she was scared of what had just happened to her. After what she had been through in the colony, an exertion such as the one she had just put her body through was not humanly possible. Hugging her knees with her arms, Akiban pressed her armored legs against her chestplate. She felt like a little girl, scared, afraid of the unknown. She felt like crying.

Only minutes later, Akiban was standing on the bridge behind Rynes, gazing out of the viewport as the _Ex Astris Scientia _dropped out FTL transfer and approached the Juno Lagoon mass relay. Not feeling even a hint of her earlier fit of depression, she was now entirely focused on what was to come. The relay jump to the 1,523 lightyears distant Exodus Cluster would take only a few seconds. Then they would see where the quarian program was taking them. While Rynes had assured her several times that the yacht's comm systems were fully operational, Akiban knew that if the program directed the ship to another mass relay in the Exodus Cluster, any recipients of the distress call would potentially have only a few minutes to react and to intercept the yacht.

"Two minutes until contact with the relay," Rynes reported.

Akiban nodded silently, damning the simplicity of space travel in her thoughts. Large amounts of galactic ship traffic were fully automated, and even simple navigation programs could take a vessel from one side of the galaxy to the other with the assistance of navigation buoys that transmitted telemetry for approach trajectories and course optimizations.

"I'm really not looking forward to explaining this situation to whoever is going to pick us up," Rynes muttered.

"The Navy has patrols in the Exodus Cluster these days," Akiban said. "At least they won't shoot us out of space or sell us into slavery."

"Oh, that makes me feel much better."

"I love sarcasm," Akiban muttered, squinting at the growing speck of light that was now bigger and brighter than the pale dots around it.

"Sixty seconds."

The chances of getting intercepted by a Navy vessel depended entirely on how close it was and where the yacht was going. Akiban realized that at FTL the _Ex Astris Scientia _was faster than a _Midway_-class frigate because of its more advanced mass effect core and lower mass, but she suspected that the civilian ship had a lower tolerance for electrical charge and thus couldn't maintain high speeds for as long as a military vessel—for the luxury yacht speed was a nice perk, for a warship mobility could make the difference between life and death. Annoyingly, with the relays this close together, there just wasn't enough time to scrub the ship's navigation systems between the jumps.

"Thirty seconds," Rynes said. "The program just transmitted our mass to the relay."

The mass relay was now in plain sight, ahead and slightly to port as the yacht approached it at a flat angle. Fully under the control of the quarian program, the _Ex Astris Scientia _arced into the mass-free corridor generated by the relay and was propelled to several ten thousand times the speed of light.

Only seconds later, the ship decelerated again next to a secondary mass relay in the Exodus Cluster.

"Distress call, now!" Akiban barked.

"I'm on it," Rynes hissed in an irritated voice, her fingers dancing over the controls of the golden holo-display. "It's out."

Judging from the movement of the star-littered black of space, Akiban guessed that the yacht was slightly yawing to starboard and pitching up. "Where's the new course taking us?"

Rynes took a moment to study the navigational data scrolling down the displays. "Uh, looks like we're headed for another mass relay. A secondary that's aimed at the Horse Head Nebula."

"Great. Any response to our distress call?"

"Not yet."

"How far is the target relay?"

Rynes checked the charts. "A short FTL jump." Just as she had said the last word, the _Ex Astris Scientia _leapt beyond lightspeed again.

Akiban swore and rushed over to where Kela was tied to her chair. The quarian seemed to be sleeping, so Akiban took the time to run another medical scan. Although she wasn't an expert on quarian physiology, she guessed that the increase of the girl's body temperature recorded by her omni-tool indicated a considerable fever, though not severe by human standards—whatever that meant for quarians.

"Hey, wake up," Akiban ordered as she deactivated her omni-tool.

No reaction.

Akiban grumbled and gave Kela a slap on the side of her helmet. In response she was greeted by a sharp take-in of breath, coughs, and a gush of vomit out of Kela's mouth; some of it sloshed over the lower part of the girl's face mask and over her chest and right leg. Some of it remained trapped between the mask and Kela's face, which—disgusting as it was—made her gag and retch even more. Kela vomited again, and some of the stuff drained back into her mouth as she desperately tried not to breathe through her nose. Panicking, Kela rocked her head from one side of the other, sending splashes of vomit flying to the deck on both sides.

Glad that none of Kela's gastric reject found its way onto her armor, Akiban waited for the quarian to calm down, then said, "Sounds healthy.

"Listen, I know you're really busy with trying not to die and all, but to be honest, I don't give a damn. So how about you tell me where your little program is taking us, and I give you some medi-gel love in return? Maybe some antibiotics, too?"

"My people will learn of this," Kela managed to say with audible effort. "You will pay."

Akiban pursed her lips. "Okay, now we've gone from 'I will kill you' to 'my people will kill you,' blah, blah, blah. Just tell me what I want to know, and we can get this crap over with.

"And imagine this: If you can actually tell me how to turn off the program—on the off chance that you were lying when you said you didn't have the codes—I promise to nourish and cherish you until you're the same happy manipulative bag of shit you were before all of this. How's that sound?" Akiban tried very hard not to sound too sarcastic, but she guessed that wasn't working out too well.

Instead of answering, Kela craned her neck as far as the chair's headrest would allow and started muttering something Akiban didn't understand.

"We've dropped out of FTL again. Relay contact in two minutes and fifteen seconds," Rynes called from the nav station.

Akiban didn't bother asking if there had been any response to their distress call. Since they had accelerated to FTL, any ships tracking them would have to reacquire their bearing on the _Ex Astris Scientia _before they could do even as much as communicate.

After automatically transmitting the ship's mass to the relay, the yacht jumped again, reaching the Horse Head Nebula seconds later.

"How's it looking?" Akiban asked who had rejoined Rynes at the nav station.

"Still no control," the other woman stated, shaking her head.

"Where are we going now?"

"Can't tell. We're still maneuvering."

"Send the distress call again."

Rynes did as instructed. "It's out."

Akiban heard Kela cough and vomit again. "Come on Kela, if you insist on being useless as you are, at least do us all a favor and keep that stuff in. You got any idea how that's gonna smell in an hour?"

"I don't have any love for aliens, but you are one mean bastard," Rynes noted nonchalantly.

"Ah, well," Akiban said, folding her arms across her chest. "There's the blood of enough of my Marines on her hands to justify worse. She's lucky I'm not the vengeful type."

"She killed your Marines?" Rynes inquired.

"Let me put this way: Had she come clear from the start, neither of us would be in this mess right now. Instead of telling me that she had a ship that we could have used to communicate with the Parrin comm buoy, she preferred to pull off her stunt and steal the device while we were fighting for our lives. And before you ask, no, I didn't trust her. I just underestimated the scope of how badly she was going to screw me over."

"I see." Rynes seemed a bit absent-minded for a moment, but then she returned her attention to the holo-displays in front of her. "We're headed for one of the Horse Head Nebula's primary mass relay."

The _Ex Astris Scientia_ accelerated to FTL.

"Where's it lead?" Akiban asked.

"Hawking Eta."

It took a moment to sink in. Hawking Eta... Hawking Eta... "Shit. The Terminus Systems."

"I'm afraid so," Rynes confirmed. "And still no response to our distress call."

Varelius awakened in the living room of his safe house. He had performed an emergency surgery on his wounded hip joint, all under minimal local anesthesia to minimize the effects of the anesthetic on his already weakened body. Only when he had finished did he finally allow himself to pass out.

Sitting in his armchair, he looked around. The contents of a field surgery kit lay strewn on a small table next to him. The air was thick with the smell of medi-gel and an undertone of blood. He rose to his feet and tentatively stepped on his right foot. When the pain turned out to be bearable, he swung his right leg back and forth carefully, grimacing at the sensation it sent through the entire right side of his body. It hurt, but the joint was largely functional again, and with it the adjacent leg; that was what counted.

Varelius removed the transfusion of synthetic turian blood from his left arm that he had used to counter blood loss during the surgery and gazed at the ceiling, starting to form a plan in his mind. In order to pursue the quarians, he had to get off world first and gain access to an extranet uplink to track the homing beacon on their ship. He checked his omni-tool and saw that the cargo drone hadn't arrived in orbit yet; it was supposed to notify him via tight-beam transmission as soon as it was in position. With any luck, the humans would ignore it and let it depart once it had dropped its cargo, ideally with Varelius on board. Once he was out of orbit, it was only a question of time until he found the quarians. Then he could finally wrap up this tediously irritating mission.

Carefully he put his hand on the backplate of his armor and was content to register that it had cooled down. He'd still have to go to the warehouse and replace the damaged heatsinks of the camo device if he wanted to sneak anywhere near the airfield, but that was a minor problem as he saw it. Varelius was back in the game.

"Welcome to Hawking Eta," Rynes announced dryly as the _Ex Astris Scientia _decelerated and immediately started maneuvering again.

"I don't believe this!" Akiban exclaimed and stomped her foot on the deck. "Where the hell are we going? Rynes, do you know where the Migrant Fleet is? Is that where it's taking us?"

"No idea, sorry."

Akiban pressed her right hand against her face until it hurt. The Terminus Systems. With the kind of people roaming this part of the galaxy, pulling the plug on the mass effect core was definitely canned. Helplessly doomed to inaction, Akiban and Rynes could do nothing but wait until the quarian program released its hold on the yacht's navigation systems.

"Should I send a distress call?" Rynes joked.

"Very funny," Akiban responded. "I'll go and roll out the red carpet for our pirate guests. Do you think they'll bring their slaver friends along? We don't want to run out of tea in the middle of the party, now."

Rynes chuckled and said, "We're accelerating again."

"Where to?"

"Primary relay, connected to Omega."

Akiban snarled. "This is just getting better and better. How long until we hit the relay?"

"About four and a half minutes."

"Okay." Akiban spun on her heel and once more approached Kela. The quarian's body temperature had increased by another degree, the fever making her groan and writhe in agony. She was pale, even for quarian standards, and her face had a sickly tinge to it.

"This isn't even funny anymore," Akiban proclaimed and slapped Kela's head to get the girl's attention. "In a bit more than four minutes we'll be on our way to Omega. You know what that means, right? It means that we'll all be pretty damn screwed; that includes you. A luxury yacht like this is a prime target for any pirate, and without nav control we can't even run." She slapped her again. "Hey! I'm talking to you!"

"Akiban! We've got a problem!" Rynes called from the nav.

"What is it now?"

"Come check this out."

Reluctantly Akiban turned away from Kela and walked back to Rynes. "What?"

Rynes pointed at one of the holo-displays. Akiban couldn't make much sense of the numbers, but "DRIVE CORE," "electric charge," and the indicator deep in the red where it said "critical" were quite self-explanatory.

"When did you last discharge the thing?" Akiban demanded.

"When I landed in Balance Point," Rynes answered. "But the core's been operating at peak output way longer than it was designed to; that's caused it to build up a significant static charge."

"How much longer until we get cooked?"

"I don't know," Rynes said. "Not long."

"Isn't there an automatic emergency shutdown or something?"

Rynes sighed. "Yes, probably, but shutting down the core won't make the built up charge go away. Besides, I'd rather get cooked than experience what usually follows floating adrift through the Terminus Systems. Finders keepers, remember?"

Akiban had to admit that Rynes had a point there, though she herself preferred to go down fighting.

"I also think that if the emergency shutdown was still operational, it would have already been triggered," Rynes pointed out. "I think the quarian program disabled it, which wouldn't be surprising considering there's a stupidly simple override."

"Do you sometimes get the feeling that the entire universe is conspiring against you?" Akiban mused.

"Sometimes," Rynes muttered in confirmation.

"Well, maybe the quarians are as smart as everybody says and they calculated speed, mass, and drive core charge to just get us wherever we're headed," Akiban said, trying to convince herself rather than Rynes.

"Ever the optimist."

Akiban locked her gaze on the drive core status display. "When will it fry us?"

"Anywhere between where it's now and the top of the scale."

"Very helpful." Akiban took a deep breath. "Is there anything we can do about it?"

"Not while we're in open space."

The urge to hurt someone rose up in Akiban again, but she suppressed it. If the drive core charge was already in the critical, then the ship wouldn't be taking them much further. "Does this thing have an escape pod?"

"Of course it does!" Rynes snapped. "Habitat deck, port-side hatch at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the bridge."

"All right."

"What are you planning? We can't just let the ship float through space with the geth device in the hold!"

"We don't need to launch the pod," Akiban explained. "We just need to get inside. If we seal the hatch, we should be protected when the core discharges into the hull."

"Are you sure?"

She wasn't. "Yes."

"Okay. I'll link my omni-tool to the ship's navigation sensors. Like that we'll at least know where we are before it happens."

"Good idea," Akiban said and ran to Kela. She cut the quarian loose with the laser scalpel, grabbed the discarded visor from the ground, and started dragging her toward the rear of the bridge.

They were halfway down the stairs when Rynes caught up with them. "Done. We'll be hitting the relay in about a minute."

"Right." After reaching the escape pod access, Akiban hit the control next to the door, opening it, and hauled Kela inside. Then she jumped in herself and waited for Rynes to follow.

When they were all inside, Akiban sealed the hatch behind them and powered up the pod. She had, in fact, no idea if the pod was sufficiently isolated from the rest of the ship to protect them from the discharge, but it was better than sitting on the bridge and waiting for the inevitable. As Akiban understood it, their survival largely hinged on two factors: The first was the design of the clamps that connected the pod to the yacht; since electrical currents always went the way of least resistance, the isolation of the clamps from the rest of the ship and the conductivity of the materials employed in their construction would determine how much of the charge would end up shooting into the pod's hull. And second, the design of the pod itself and how well the interior was isolated from the outer hull would decide how much current would ultimately flow through their bodies.

"Thirty seconds until we hit the relay," Rynes reported.

Akiban nodded and crouched down to arrange Kela in the corridor between the rows of seats. The floor of the pod was covered with a sort of mat that didn't look like it was very conductive. "Try not to touch anything metallic."

Rynes jerked away from the lateral bulkhead, scowling. "Shouldn't we release the docking clamps?"

Akiban shook her head. "No. That would only drop the pod to the bottom of the shaft and increase the surface of contact with the ship. We're better off this way."

"Good thing at least one of us payed attention in physics class," Rynes said.

"I didn't," Akiban mumbled.

"You're horrible, you know. You were supposed to say something along the lines of 'I've always loved physics and the only reason why I enlisted with the Marines instead of writing a dissertation was because I got fed up with academic bureaucracy!'"

Akiban shot Rynes a lopsided glance. "Hey, you're the scientist here, so shut it, will you?"

"Damn it, I'm an archeologist, not a physicist. When I need to know something about physics, I ask a VI," Rynes explained not too seriously.

Akiban rolled her eyes. "And I'm a goddamn officer. When I need to survive, I just pull something out of my ass and hope for the best! What matters is how confident I look about the shit I'm trying to sell for a plan."

"You weren't supposed to tell me that!" Rynes mock-complained and looked at her omni-tool. "By the way, we've just made the jump. Welcome to the Sahrabarik system."

"Great. Where to next?" Akiban asked, nudging Kela with her left foot. The quarian was lying on her back, her was breathing flat and rapid.

"Maneuvering... Wait. Here we go. We're on an approach vector for Omega."

"But I don't want to go to Omega!" Akiban exclaimed, mimicking the tone of a pouting child.

Rynes remained silent, staring at her omni-tool.

Akiban didn't know much about Omega other than that it was the de-facto capital of the Terminus Systems; and that was reason enough to avoid it. She had never understood the reasons behind the Council's tolerance toward the lawless space in the galaxy. The Alliance at least had the guts to expand into the Attican Traverse and slowly but steadily bring order to the chaos of thousands of solar systems that were mostly shaped by violence and crime. All things considered, Akiban didn't think that the factions of the Terminus Systems would be able to resist a joint effort by the Council races to pacify the area. If she were in charge, she would just clean the space of the scum that resided there planet by planet, system by system, and impose a demilitarized zone on the whole area.

"We're in FTL transfer again," Rynes said.

"That can't be good," Akiban commented.

"Maybe it can," Rynes countered. "If we make it to Omega, we can discharge the drive core there. And maybe the quarian program will terminate itself once we've arrived. Then we can get the hell out of here."

"Ever the optimist," Akiban teased.

They spent the next minutes in tense silence, which gave Akiban time to think. She wondered what she should do once they reached Omega. On the one hand, it greatly facilitated her plans to disappear from the scene. On the other hand, she couldn't just leave the device to Rynes. There was still the possibility that the woman was responsible for the events of Balance Point, and even if she wasn't, Akiban had the feeling that the device was still dangerous and needed to be destroyed. But then again, if it had been cooked by the turian's bombs just like the other electric equipment in the vicinity of their activation, then maybe it could still prove useful; perhaps a proper investigation would yield intelligence on how to help its victims.

The escape pod rocked under them, and Akiban and Rynes looked at each other. "We've landed," the latter announced.

Not hesitating, Akiban sprang into action. She activated the hatch release and jumped out of the escape pod, raced up the stairs, and entered the bridge. Everything was just as they had left it earlier, except that instead of the star-speckled black of space the interior of a small hangar was now visible through the viewport: A rich conglomeration of browns and grays in reddish light, the place had seen better times.

Arriving after Akiban, Rynes jumped into the seat at the nav station and immediately initiated an emergency shutdown of the mass effect core. Only when the core was completely offline did she allow herself to slack in the chair with a heavy sigh of relief. "It's down."

Akiban took a deep breath. "We still need to discharge it. How do we do that? I don't want to hang out here any longer than we absolutely have to."

"Give me a second," Rynes said as she operated the controls on the holo-displays. "This is strange. Usually when you land or dock somewhere, the ship's systems should establish contact with the station's computer and give you access to automated maintenance facilities like refueling or core discharge. But nothing seems to be responding here."

"Welcome to Omega," Akiban stated dryly.

"I guess we'll have to do it manually, then," Rynes concluded.

"How do we do that?"

Rynes spun her chair around to face Akiban. "There's a port on the starboard side of the hull. I'll open the protective cover from here, but you'll have to manually connect the conductor arm. You know what it looks like?"

"No idea," Akiban admitted.

"Okay, listen. What you're looking for is a mechanic arm, several meters long, probably with hydraulic joints and some sort of control panel. The arm itself contains an isolated conductor with a plug on one end. The other end should lead to a bulkhead or below deck. Got it?"

"Yeah, got it. Do you have something so we can talk to each other? My comm implant and the comm amp in my armor are toast."

"The locker where you got the scalpel from the medikit? There's a survival pack in there, too. Grab one of the comm links; it should already be set up properly."

Akiban took one of the palm-sized communication devices and left the bridge. With a quick glance into the escape pod she asserted that Kela was still where she had left her; in her condition, the quarian wasn't going anywhere. Almost running, Akiban made her way to the cargo hold and from there to the loading ramp. After lowering it, she stepped onto the hangar deck.

The hangar door must have closed after their landing because Akiban could see no space anywhere, only the monotonous shades of dirty and decaying bulkheads. As she started looking for the conductor arm, Akiban couldn't but wonder why they had landed in this particular hangar. She had always thought that, Omega being a major trading—or whatever else they did in the Terminus Systems—hub, the place would be somewhat busier. But the lack of contact probably wasn't a bad thing.

After she found something that vaguely matched Rynes's description—it was the closest match among all the things inside the hangar—Akiban made her way over to where the thing stood. It was a conductor arm, all right, and the wheeled cart it was on even came online when she ran her hand over where she suspected the activator of a holographic control panel. A bit of experimenting allowed Akiban to familiarize herself with the controls; they were in what she believed to be Vorcha, a fact that made her experiments turn into cautious button mashing and included a hopefully not damaging collision with a wall. When Akiban finally got the hang of it, she drove the cart to the starboard side of the _Ex Astris Scientia_ and aligned it with the open port just in front of the starboard propulsion nacelle. She lowered the arm—and cursed.

Akiban produced the comm link from a belt pouch and commed, "Rynes, we've got a problem."

"That seems to be a popular theme," Rynes responded. "What is it?"

"It doesn't fit."

"What do you mean, 'it doesn't fit?'"

Akiban approached the yacht's hull and inspected the port. "The arm's plug doesn't fit in with the port. The plug's got three large triangularly aligned round pins, while the port seems to be made to fit with four horizontally aligned longish, rectangular pins."

"Let me check the manual."

"You do that. Akiban out." The day something will just work out, she thought, shaking her head. Thinking back to her short career with the Marines, Akiban wondered if plans that actually worked were something that existed only in military training and fiction. Whatever she had touched in the past twelve hours had gone from bad to worse, mostly due to lack of intel or other factors beyond her control. The question if all experienced officers knew that and planned accordingly forced itself into her mind, making her wonder further if it just had been her who had failed. Then again, she simply didn't know what she could have done differently, aside, perhaps, from having ordered the turian and the quarians shot on sight and been done with it. And of course she could have followed Ktenge's orders and cleared out of Balance Point.

"Akiban?"

"Huh?"

"There should be an adapter in an equipment locker on the port side of the cargo hold."

Akiban sighed. "All right." She trotted back to the loading ramp and entered the ship again. It took her a while to search through a number of equipment lockers until she finally found what she suspected to be the adapter. It was a disk of almost half a meter in diameter, handles on the sides, and what appeared to be an adaptable plug on one side and an adaptable port on the other. She uttered a silent curse when she lifted the thing, estimating its weight at something in the excess of thirty kilograms.

"Akiban, we've got a problem."

"God dammit," she muttered and set the adapter down. "Yeah, it was your turn to encounter one," she finally responded after getting her hands free to grab the comm link.

"Proximity sensors indicate that there are life signs massing outside the hangar door; we've got some twenty four on the far side right now."

"They could be here for any reason," Akiban said skeptically. "But considering this is Omega, they're probably not here to serve refreshments."

"You don't say!" Rynes exclaimed sarcastically. "What do we do now, oh military genius?"

Akiban had no idea. With the sort of resources at their disposition, and considering the numerical odds, a fight was out of the question. She walked down the ramp and turned to face the door, saying, "Hope they don't know how to open the hangar door?"

The hangar door parted and started opening.

"I hate irony so much," Akiban hissed, walking up the port side of the yacht.

Her decision to favor a diplomatic approach and leave her shotgun holstered proved to be the right call when a mob of armed vorcha streamed into the hangar. Akiban could see that they left two sentries outside as the rest of the creatures spread out near the _Ex Astris Scientia's _bow. She noted that they weren't covering the angles very well, and several of them were blocking the firing solutions of others. They were clearly used to operating as a pack and confident in their superiority; in spite of their lack of organization, Akiban knew that their confidence was justified, though. Vorcha were tediously hard to kill and fought ferociously with little regard for their lives. Once more, she was outmatched.

One of the vorcha shoved his way past several of the others to come to stand in front of Akiban, who had stopped just port of the bow.

He... She...—Akiban decided in favor of "it"—started talking in their language.

"I don't understand you," she said bluntly, trying not to look intimidated by the prospect of gruesome death.

It snarled and said, "Where are quarians?"

"You mean Kela'Van nar Rayya and them?"

"Where?" the vorcha hissed, stepping closer menacingly.

Obviously the vorcha had been expecting the quarians to arrive at this specific hangar; that meant that the quarian program had brought them here for a reason.

"The quarians are currently unavailable," Akiban explained. "But maybe I can help you."

Apparently the vorcha seemed uncertain, but the pack behavior demanded of the alpha to show strength and resolve the situation in spite of the unexpected circumstances. It paced left and right several times, then it turned back to face her. "Do you have it?" it finally asked.

"Do I have what?"

The vorcha hissed. "The machine!"

"The big blue machine with the lights and the arms?" Akiban asked.

"Yes!"

So that was what they were after, Akiban thought. They had expected the device to be brought here, and they had expected the quarians to deliver it. That meant that the quarians must have struck some sort of deal with the vorcha, which made the theft of the device the only reason for their presence in the colony.

But that hypothesis didn't fit with the quarians' need to return a gift to the Migrant Fleet. That meant that the vorcha must have promised them something in return. For a moment Akiban wondered if she could snatch that payment instead, but every alarm in her mind went off at that thought. She couldn't possibly let the vorcha make off with the device; who knew whom they had struck a deal with or what they intended to do with it.

"I have it," Akiban finally said.

The vorcha turned around and barked something to his pack. Most of them remained where they were, but two moved forward and started passing around Akiban.

"Wait!" she called. She had to stop them somehow. "I didn't know what we were getting into, so I rigged the machine with explosives." She raised her left forearm so all of the vorcha could see it and activated the omni-tool.

The alpha barked something, and the two others stopped dead in their tracks. Apparently they were buying the bluff.

"If you try to remove the explosives without sending the proper password first, they will turn this entire hangar into a small sun," Akiban continued. "I'll allow one of you to join me in the cargo hold of my ship. That one can inspect the device. When you're satisfied, we'll discuss transportation and my payment."

"You will give me the password and the machine now!" the alpha demanded.

"I will give it to you as soon as you've confirmed that it's what you're looking for. Then you can give me my payment. I'm sure a strong vorcha like you isn't afraid of one human."

It contemplated this for a painfully long moment, but then ordered, "Go!"

Akiban turned around and started walking toward the loading ramp. The vorcha was following her reluctantly, its assault rifle aimed at her back. Obviously it didn't trust her, but any more show of weakness and its days as the pack's alpha were numbered; Akiban had no doubt of that.

She walked up the loading ramp and entered the cargo hold. Carefully the vorcha entered as well. When it saw the device, it moved past her and toward it, staring at it as it approached.

Akiban slowly reached for her comm link with one hand and pulled her shotgun from her back with the other. There would be only one chance to do this right. "Rynes," she whispered. "Close the loading ramp. Now."

The vorcha spun around as the ramp started to rise, suspecting betrayal, only to end up staring into the barrel of Akiban's shotgun. She pulled the trigger and blasted the creature away. The vorcha went skidding across the deck, rolled several times, and jumped to its feet again. Akiban swore and darted ahead, seeking to close the distance to her target.

It had dropped its assault rifle and was now sprinting toward it, but even as it jumped for it, Akiban fired again, hitting the creature in the leg right below the hip. The loading ramp sealed with a hiss as the vorcha hit the deck next to the device. Knowing better than to fire her shotgun again, Akiban picked up the vorcha's assault rifle, aimed, and fired, riddling the creature with projectiles until the weapon overheated. She holstered both weapons on her back and started stomping the alien's head with her boot, again and again, until its skull gave way with a sickening crunch.

"Okay, why are they shooting at us?" Rynes asked as Akiban came running across the bridge.

"I think I pissed them off," Akiban admitted.

"Well done," Rynes complained. "Now we're gonna die."

"They wanted the device. I decided not to give it to them."

"They knew it was on board?"

Akiban nodded. "Yeah. They were asking for the quarians when I confronted them. Smells like the suitbags were supposed to deliver the device to the vermin that's shooting and hammering the hull now."

"That's odd," Rynes muttered absent-mindedly.

"What is?" Akiban asked and drank from her water supply. Through the forward viewport she could see that the vorcha had closed the hangar door.

"Vorcha aren't exactly known for having far-spread interests," Rynes explained. "They're pretty damn stupid and never operate in formations any larger than packs; and those are usually only concerned with their own survival. An interstellar plot doesn't exactly scream 'vorcha.' I think someone is employing them as proxies."

"Fascinating," Akiban admitted. She thought that what Rynes said made sense, but unfortunately it wasn't going to help them to get rid of the angry pack outside the ship. And while the vorcha and their small arms weren't a threat to the _Ex Astris Scientia_, they were also effectively trapping the ship in the hangar by preventing Akiban and Rynes from discharging the ship's dive core. Or maybe not.

Akiban put a hand on Rynes's shoulder. "Can you discharge the drive core into the hangar's atmosphere?"

Rynes bit her lower lip. "I don't know. Can I?"

"Look it up in the manual!" Akiban exclaimed, pointing at the holo-displays in front of the other woman.

"By the way," Rynes said as she was navigating her way through her yacht's file system, "I'm pretty sure that I'm back in control of the ship."

"Well, that's good," Akiban muttered. "Means we can get the hell out of this all-forsaken place soon."

"Ah." Rynes cleared her throat. "The discharge of the core into an atmosphere is done over the ship's outer hull. Basically, you release the core's charge into the hull and wait for it to dissipate into the surrounding gas from there. However, you need to keep the voltage below, uh, here, this much"—She pointed at the holo-display—"to prevent the generated heat from cooking the isolation between the inner and the outer hulls and flowing through the ship's interior."

"What's that down here?" Akiban asked, pointing at another passage in the manual.

"That's the electric conductivity of the surrounding medium," Rynes answered. "It's a value you need to know in order to release the proper amount of ampere from the core into the hull."

Akiban scratched her scalp. "So, can we cook the vorcha without cooking ourselves?"

"I don't know," Rynes said, burying her face in her hands, her words distorted as her palms pressed her lips against her teeth. "I suppose we could discharge the core at least partially, maybe even enough to fire up the mass effect fields again, but I have no idea how much current is necessary to kill the vorcha out there."

"Just discharge the maximum you can without frying us!" Akiban called.

"Yeah, and how much is that?" Rynes bit back. "I have no clue! Assuming the hangar is isolated—which it probably is—we can only blow so much charge into it before it stops absorbing electrons from the hull. Then the hull will heat up anyway, and at some point the isolation will melt—and you know what that means."

"I know, I know," Akiban said soothingly. "I just thought you had some sort of software to calculate—oh shit!"

"What?"

"Close the shutter!"

Rynes did as ordered and the shutters snapped close.

Akiban sighed. "They brought rocket launchers."

As if to confirm her statement, the impact of a rocket somewhere on the hull shook the bridge.

"I can't think when people are shooting rockets at me!" Rynes moaned.

Akiban had had enough. "Ah, screw this. Program the core to release two percent of its charge into the hull in forty seconds. That should give us enough time to get to the escape pod and seal it."

"Two percent? Are you crazy? If that much is released at once, the air in the hangar will turn into superheated plasma!"

"Well, that's kinda the point, isn't it?" Akiban shouted.

"You're crazy. You're completely crazy, you know that?" Rynes muttered even as she entered the necessary commands.

"Nobody in their right mind enlists," Akiban mumbled. "You done?"

"Give me a second... There. Done."

Akiban grabbed Rynes's shoulder and tore her out of her seat, setting her on her feet. The two of them hurried to the escape pod and sealed the hatch behind them. Kela was still lying on the ground where they had left her, breathing flatly but rapidly. Akiban took a moment to scan the quarian girl with her omni-tool; her fever had increased considerably.

Her own omni-tool up, Rynes checked the countdown. "Twenty seconds until discharge."

Akiban made sure she wasn't touching anything metallic and hugged her arms around herself. She didn't have the faintest idea if their plan was going to work. There were probably millions of factors they hadn't considered, and even if they had, neither of them would have known what to do with them.

"Ten seconds."

Maybe it would work out, or maybe they'd be dead in ten seconds.

"Nine... Eight... Seven... Six... Five... Four... Three... Two... One... Discharge!"


	11. Chapter 11

**XI**

Cloaked, Varelius raised his sniper rifle and surveyed the area surrounding the cargo drone through the scope. From his position at the edge of the airfield he saw the automated _Kowloon_-class vessel sitting in the open where it had touched down minutes ago. Unfortunately, it was surrounded by ten Marines from the fort. One squad had set up a perimeter while the other was eyeing the drone as it unloaded its cargo. While they hadn't decided to ignore it, at least they hadn't blown it out of the sky—yet.

Varelius put the rifle away and checked his HUD for the status of his cloaking device. It was operating within standard parameters, making him optically invisible and keeping his armor's outer temperature equal to that of the surrounding air. The new heatsinks that were absorbing the excess heat from his body and from the device and his equipment worked well so far, though Varelius was not happy about having been forced to tinker with the thing before entrusting it with his mission and life. The repairs he had administered were makeshift at best; parts of the device had suffered considerable damage in the recent overheat. Without an opportunity to test the camo, it seemed to be running on hope as much as it was on power.

Since he had to make it aboard the drone before it unloaded its cargo and automatically sealed its boarding ramp, Varelius urged himself to move. He rose from his cover, a small rock formation, and started walking toward the surrounded vessel. A gust of wind hit him in the back immediately, his invisible body cutting a swath into the thick dust the air carried. Suppressing a curse, he realized that the turbulence his body was causing would make him visible at close range, perhaps even at mid-range, depending on how much attention the Marines were paying to their surroundings.

He dropped to his knee, almost groaning at the pain that shot through his body from his not yet fully healed hip. While turbulence in the wind wasn't exactly conclusive evidence of an intrusion, Varelius feared that, in their indoctrinated state, the Marines would react reflexively and perforate any spotted anomaly with rounds just to be sure. He could attempt to eliminate them, of course, but if the unit dispatched to investigate the drone sent a distress call or failed to report in, he probably wouldn't even make it off the airfield. As he saw it, stealth was still his best option.

Attempting to minimize the interference his body caused in the airflow around him, Varelius experimentally tried to move while crouched, but the excruciating pain in his hip joint stopped him after a few steps. He would never make it the hundred or so meters to the drone like that, and passing out in the middle of the airfield was hardly conducive to his escape. So he went prone and pushed himself up to all fours with his legs stretched out, keeping his torso low and crawling like a lizard. The pain was bearable and his silhouette minimal. And since he was invisible anyway, he was willing to bear with this undignified form of movement for as long as it was necessary. He only needed to be careful about not making any loud noises that would betray his presence. The wind and the Marines' helmets worked in his favor, he knew, but any slip could still prove disastrous.

Varelius managed to crawl inside the guard perimeter without any problems. The sentries were stationary, facing out at ninety-degree angles, and so far apart that avoiding contact was not an issue. Their squad leader was nowhere in sight. Now, though, boarding the drone was about to be more difficult. Two Marines stood guard at the bottom of the boarding ramp as cargo crates slowly moved down two automated rails between their positions. The last two Marines were probably inside, searching the cargo hold. The Spectre continued toward the ramp and chose a route between the already unloaded crates. When he was out of the humans' field of view, he lay flat on his stomach and allowed his muscles to relax. His chest, arms, and abdominals burned with exhaustion, and the stinging pain from his wounded hip clearly indicated that it wouldn't be playing along for much longer.

With a deep breath he calmed himself and closed his eyes. He knew that he couldn't give up now. He wouldn't give those humans the satisfaction. He was better than them. He had beaten that foolish human lieutenant, and she hadn't even been indoctrinated like the weaklings that were in his way now. He'd show them what turians were made of. With a quiet groan Varelius picked himself up and started crawling forward again, heavily favoring his right hip.

He reached the bottom of the boarding ramp. The two Marines who were standing guard made no indication that they had noticed him. Varelius paused for a moment as another gust of wind hit him laterally, almost knocking him to the side. When he had stabilized himself, he continued up the ramp. His hands were already on it, and his left leg, when pain exploded through his entire body. He couldn't help but grunt and collapse on the inclined surface. The slight impact of his body against the ramp made a low thud, and he froze.

"What was that?" a voice asked to his right, alert.

"What was what?" A voice on the left.

"I heard something." On the right, closer. Steps.

Varelius dared to slowly rise into his crawling position again, resting his right leg crossed over his left, and slowly turned his head to his right. A Marine approached with tentative steps and stopped only short of hitting Varelius's side with his shin.

"I'm telling you I heard something!" the Marine insisted.

"You're always hearing things," the other called.

Varelius was holding his breath and gritting his teeth. His muscles were burning in a whole spectrum of agonies. Belatedly he realized that he shouldn't have given in to the faint hope of being able to sneak in. He should have stayed low and relaxed. But now it was done and he couldn't lie down without making another sound. The Marine was clearly looking around on head level and not down, which was good, but Varelius couldn't afford to draw any attention to himself now. He would have to kill the Marine before his muscles gave way so to at least retain the element of surprise, but that would jeopardize his escape plan.

"There was something!" the Marine called.

There was a heavy sigh on the other side. "Look, remember two days ago when you insisted that you heard voices everywhere?"

The closer Marine exhaled forcibly. "Yeah, I suppose you're right." He turned and walked to his post.

The turian, his arms and legs now shaking almost uncontrollably under the tension and of exhaustion, drew himself up into a crouch.

"Shut it, out there!" someone yelled from the inside of the ship.

"Yes, sir!" the two guards replied in unison.

Reacting quickly, Varelius used the shouting to cover up the sound of his steps and scurried up the ramp and into the ship. Inside, he could tell that most of the crates were already unloaded, and that he had just made it aboard in time. Leaning against the port bulkhead, he allowed himself to squat down on the deck. His muscles still burned, but he could finally relax.

Then he heard steps approaching from deeper inside the cargo hold. Three Marines approached, their weapons holstered in their back slots, chatting.

"The ship's computer says it's a scheduled delivery of tech components and that the ship will depart as soon as it's unloaded its cargo. If we hold it here or destroy it, someone will miss it sooner or later. They'll investigate, and we'll have to deal with the consequences. Like it's not enough that we've taken out a frigate already. I see that coming back to bite us in the ass. And don't forget that there are still enemies on the surface. We'll have to smoke them sooner or later, too. My recommendation to the captain will be to let the ship go. We've got enough on our hands as it is."

"As you say, sir."

"Damn right I say."

They walked past Varelius and down the boarding ramp, accompanied by the last pair of crates. Moments after they had left, the ramp rose automatically and sealed itself. Varelius let go a deep breath and chuckled. Humans truly were foolish.

"We're not dead," Akiban concluded, patting her chestplate and shoulder guards as if to ascertain her materiality.

Rynes let go a heavy sigh of relief and shook her head. "Evidently."

"Let's hope the vorcha are, or what we are might not be true much longer," Akiban muttered and hit the escape pod's hatch control.

Rynes stormed out immediately and rushed to the bridge. Akiban looked down at Kela and nudged her with a boot. The quarian girl didn't respond. Rolling her eyes, Akiban activated her omni-tool and scanned her. Kela's fever was receding, but she was unconscious and her vital functions were weak. For a moment Akiban wondered if she should put her out of her misery, but she decided against it—not worth the ammo.

"So, did we smoke out the vermin?" Akiban asked when she entered the bridge.

"We'll see any moment," Rynes said and opened the viewport shutter.

Peering over the nav station and over the yacht's bow, Akiban could see only darkness with occasional discharges of static dancing through what might have been thick smoke. "Looks ionized," she figured.

"Give me a second. The sensors should be able to… Fuck!" Rynes slapped her palm against her forehead hard.

"'Fuck' what?"

"I think I screwed up," Rynes muttered in a sheepish tone. "When I programmed the core discharge, I forgot to retract the sensor antennae. Seems the entire external sensor equipment has been fried. The ship's effectively blind."

"Great," Akiban said, shaking her head. "So we're stuck here, after all? No sensors means no navigation, either, right?"

"Pretty much," Rynes confirmed. "On a brighter note, if the sensors are fried, then so are the vorcha."

Akiban remained quiet, pressing thumb and middle finger of her right hand against opposite temples. Civilians couldn't get anything right, she thought. But at least the vorcha were gone; that was a start. Now they only had to figure out how to get off Omega.

"We're going to have to fix those sensors," Rynes said. "I don't think switching ships is an option with that thing still in the cargo hold."

"I suppose. How do we do that?"

"Well, I'm not a mechanic. And I suppose you aren't, either. So we're not only going to have to buy the replacement parts, but we'll also have to find someone who can install the stuff."

"Let me guess," Akiban mused, "we don't have anywhere near enough credits for this."

"I don't think so, no."

"So, what's the plan?"

Rynes pondered this for a long moment, then she said, "I have an idea, but you're not going to like it."

Akiban was certain that she wouldn't but instead said, "Spit it out."

"I have friends on Omega. They should be able to help us out. But I'm not sure if they're going to like seeing you. They're kind of suspicious toward strangers, you see."

Even though Akiban wasn't looking forward to stumbling into more secret behind-the-scenes-scheming-bullshit, her patience with this entire affair was wearing thin. "Look, so long as they can get us out of here, I'm all for it."

"Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you."

"Noted."

"There's another problem," Rynes said, staring out of the viewport. "We can't just walk out of the ship. As you pointed out, the gas out there is ionized. I'm not a physicist, but I'm pretty sure we'll get electrocuted if we try to leave the ship."

"Yes, of course it couldn't be easy for once," Akiban murmured. She wondered if her armor would protect her if she sealed it for EV, but without power for life support she'd run out of air in a matter of minutes. Perhaps that was long enough to make it out of the hangar, yet she couldn't just open the inner hangar doors and vent the plasma into the station. That would only draw unwanted attention to them if nothing else.

"We need to get the plasma out of the hangar," Rynes concluded.

Akiban walked to the front of the bridge and peered out of the viewport again, trying to spot anything helpful through the uniform gray of smoke. "Shouldn't there be some emergency venting procedure?"

"Maybe," Rynes said. "But I couldn't access any of the hangar's functions even with the ship's comms intact. Good luck trying that now."

Akiban started pacing back and forth on the bridge. She was starting to feel restless again and wanted to do something. Anything. "Then we need to vent the plasma into space."

"As I said, I can't access any of the—"

"I know," Akiban said, a dark grin spreading across her face. "But violence can." A plan started to form in her mind. "We'll punch a hole into the outer hangar door. Not a big one, just big enough for the plasma to slowly vent out. Then we seal the hole using the _Scientia_'s emergency repair kit and repressurize the hangar."

After taking a deep breath, Rynes slacked in her chair and leaned back, gazing at the ceiling. "Well, yeah, but I see a bunch of problems there. For example, how do we punch that hole? And how are we going to repressurize the hangar?"

Akiban rubbed her eyes. Rynes had a point. The _Scientia _was a civilian yacht with no armament, and her shotgun didn't have enough power to puncture half a meter of steel or more. "You don't happen to have an anti-materiel rifle stowed away somewhere, do you?"

"As in 'anti-matter?' Just how crazy are you, exactly?"

"No, as in anti-materiel as opposed to anti-personnel," Akiban hissed, annoyed with Rynes's civilian ignorance.

"I'm sorry, Lieutenant," Rynes apologized in an exaggerated manner. "But no, my line of work doesn't involve a lot shooting."

"Well, apparently it does," Akiban grumbled.

"Very funny. Let's just keep it cool. We'll figure something out."

"That's it!" Akiban exclaimed.

"Is it?" Rynes inquired, straightening in her chair.

"This is a civilian ship. So the engines should be helium-3/deuterium-based fusion torches, right?"

Rynes shrugged. "I suppose."

"All right, here's the deal," Akiban said, stopping her pacing to look straight at the other woman. "First, you fire a brief impulse from the main thrusters, maybe half a second. The plasma exhaust should be hot enough to heat up the outer hangar door and weaken its structural integrity. Then you fire up the mass effect core and use the maneuvering thrusters to bump the _Scientia_'s ass into the door, maybe at half a meter per second. With any luck it'll be enough to cause a hull breach."

Pursing her lips, Rynes looked at Akiban for a long moment. "That might just be crazy enough to work," she finally said. "It'll require some fine tuning, but I think we can do it. I need to figure out the power output for the mass effect fields to be enough to maneuver but not high enough for us to bounce off the door."

Akiban nodded. "Good."

"The only problem I see is that the breach this is going to cause might turn out to be too big to seal manually."

"Oh, we'll figure something out."

Rynes sighed. "Fine. It's not like we have any options, anyway."

"All right, you start the prep. I'll check on the suitbag." With that Akiban turned around and sprinted from the bridge and down the stairs.

Kela was still where she had left her. As a medical scan of the quarian yielded no significant changes from the last, Akiban dropped into one of the escape pod's seats and yawned. She realized that she was hungry again, very hungry.

"So, what are we going to do with you now that we don't need you anymore, huh?" she wondered aloud, not really expecting an answer. Kela was clearly dying, or maybe she was already dead and her body just didn't know it yet. Either way, there was no point in her suffering anymore. She was of no use. Akiban nudged the girl's shoulder with her boot which earned no reaction. Of course she could seal Kela's suit and give her heavy doses of medi-gel and anti-biotics, but then again, was it really worth the effort? The little bitch had been manipulating Akiban from the start with no remorse, and who knew what kind of schemes of revenge that little alien mind would concoct if it got the chance.

So Akiban made a decision. She grabbed Kela by the ankle and dragged her to the cargo hold, where she put her down next to the body of the vorcha alpha. She pulled the laser scalpel from a pouch on her belt and activated it. She set it to maximum length and power, and with a quick sweep she cut Kela's throat. While she wasn't familiar with quarian anatomy and physiology, Akiban suspected that even quarians couldn't live without blood, or whatever passed for metabolic fluid with them, and was confirmed in her supposition when Kela's life signs flattened, her body all engulfed by a red pool. It wasn't justice, she knew. There was never justice in death. But she still felt better now, having ridden the galaxy of Kela. With all the quarians dead, maybe her Marines could rest in peace, or something like that.

"The quarian won't be a problem anymore," Akiban announced when she entered the bridge.

"Did you kill her?" Rynes asked without looking up from her console.

"I put her out of her misery."

"I hope you didn't make too much of a mess."

"Oops."

"Great."

"Sorry, I didn't want to waste the ammo. Besides, there was a vorcha splattered all over the deck, anyway."

"Oh, okay. In that case everything is fine," Rynes drawled sarcastically.

"Whatever," Akiban said, waving a hand. "Are you ready?"

"Almost," Rynes said. "It's not really that complicated. I'm just not sure how much power to apply to the engines during the initial burst. They do pack quite a bit of punch, and I don't want to shoot us through the inner hangar door."

"Just find out how propulsion power translates into force in Newton and look up the tonnage of this bucket. It's simple math from there," Akiban suggested.

"I'm trying!" Rynes snapped. "But it's more complicated than that! There's no chart saying this many percent of power output that much force. It's like those manuals are making fun of me! How the hell am I even supposed to understand all of this?"

Akiban sighed, rolling her eyes, and walked over to Rynes. She put a hand on her shoulder. "Easy there, all right? Take a deep breath and relax. If you can't calculate it, then just experiment. Start with, say, point five percent and gradually increase the power output. And when we feel that the ship starts moving, you just cut it."

Rynes took a deep breath and rubbed her face with both hands. "All right, all right. Give me a moment."

"You don't happen to keep some food around here, do you?" Akiban asked.

"There's a dining room and a kitchen. Third door on the port side," Rynes answered absently, her gaze locked on the nav station.

"Thanks."

Akiban's thorough search was rewarded with instant meals and a bottle of water. There was wine, too, but she didn't feel like drinking alcohol. She heated the sealed packages, picked up some flatware, and returned to the bridge.

It wasn't anything special, Akiban knew, but it tasted like the best food she'd ever eaten: pasta with bits of beef in it in a mildly spicy sauce in one compartment and a mix of peas and carrot slices in the other. And it was warm! She was devouring it, and she only had to pause twice to stop herself from throwing up when pictures of Kela drenched in her own blood and Nakata flying through the air shot through her mind. She coughed both times, closed her eyes, shook her head vehemently, and continued eating.

After a short while Rynes joined her at the command chair where Akiban had made herself comfortable. She took the other meal package and started opening it. Akiban shot her a narrow-eyed glance but decided against protesting since she was only a guest and, technically, this was Rynes's food.

"What?" Rynes asked, having noticed the look in Akiban's eyes. "You wanted to eat all of it yourself, didn't you?"

Akiban shoved another spoonful in her mouth. "Don't worry, there's more," she managed while chewing.

Rynes sighed and started eating.

"So," Akiban said between spoons. "How's it coming along?"

Rynes swallowed. "I think I can pull it off. I'm not happy about having to power the mass effect core back on, but the two-percent discharge should give us some leeway."

"Okay. I'll need an EV-suit to fix the breach, though. My armor's toast."

"There should be one in the cargo hold."

"Mhm."

When they had finished eating, Rynes returned to the nav station, and Akiban got herself another meal pack.

"Ready?" Akiban asked back on the bridge, munching.

"Won't get much readier than that," Rynes muttered.

"Then let's do this."

"Aye, aye, Captain," Rynes said and mock-saluted. With her left hand.

"That's grounds for homicide, you know," Akiban pointed out.

"What?"

"Never mind. Just do your thing."

"All right, here we go. Engaging thrusters at point one percent output."

Rynes had barely touched the controls when the gray outside the viewport blazed so bright that both women had to turn away before the shutter closed automatically. The _Ex Astris Scientia_ leapt forward with a screeching sound, covering perhaps a few meters before Rynes killed the engines.

"What the hell was that?" Akiban demanded, holding on to her meal with both hands and willpower.

"Yeah, I kind of figured that would happen. You see, the engine exhaust reaches temperatures of several million degrees centigrade even at low power levels. We might have just cooked the hangar—I mean, more than it already was."

"Thanks for the warning, anyway," Akiban said, eating again.

"At least we're still alive."

"What do you mean?"

Rynes cleared her throat. "Well, the hull isn't exactly made to withstand that kind of temperatures."

"You know what, I don't even want to know," Akiban proclaimed. "How about opening the shutter?"

It slid open and revealed a clear sight of scorched surfaces in the pale cone of light from the viewport. The whole atmosphere of plasma had drained out of the hangar since the smoke was visibly gone, but the rich collection browns and grays had transformed into a uniform ash-like black.

"There's a hull breach, I take it," Akiban concluded after a moment.

Rynes nodded. "At least we don't have to ram the ship into the door. So, that's good. Now all we need to do is fix the breach and somehow repressurize the hangar. Let me show you to the EV-suit."

His black and silver eyes intently locked on to the golden holoscreen in front of him, Varelius groaned at the data feed the drone's systems presented him with. According to the homing beacon's transmissions, the _Ex Astris Scientia _had taken the shortest possible combination of jumps to the Sahrabarik system, shortly after which the beacon had stopped reporting in. Its last transmission came via Omega's public extranet interface, which meant that the yacht could be anywhere on the station and would thus be incredibly hard to track down.

And there was something else that gave Varelius no rest: What was it the quarians wanted with the device on Omega? Of all the places in the galaxy, Omega was truly the last place where to bring sensitive material, let alone a geth indoctrination device. No, they had to be involved in something shady that didn't involve the Migrant Fleet at all; from what he knew, it was headed toward the Far Rim region beyond the Terminus Systems.

He shifted in his chair and felt another sting of pain shoot through his hip. It reminded him of what he was trying to prevent. Pain was guaranteed to ensue if the device fell into the wrong hands. He had to find it before anything happened to it. He couldn't afford to lose track of it. Yet he knew that time was playing against him. Were the device active, he could use his omni-tool to find it based on the radiation it emitted, but that was not an option since they had EMP'd it at the hangar. If he arrived too late, the device could be who knew where, perhaps not even on Omega anymore.

Allowing himself another dose of medi-gel, Varelius rubbed his gloved hand against his face, a gesture he immediately found to be appallingly human. The lieutenant, Akiban, must have rubbed off on him—something he thought was a ridiculous notion. And it disgusted him that, now that he had left Balance Point behind him, memories of Akiban kept coming back to him. She was dead, he knew, and he didn't feel bad about it. Yet he kept thinking about her, and he didn't know why. She had been a soldier, or rather whatever it was that passed for soldiers among humans; chaotic, out of control, naïve, incompetent, reckless. But she was omnipresent in his thoughts, making him envision scenarios in which he killed her, and yet it wasn't enough to banish her or the regret of not having killed her when he had had the chance.

It looked oddly like the contours of a turian head, Akiban decided as she stared at the breach in the hangar door through the visor of the EV-suit. She also felt like putting a bullet in it, just pro forma, but decided against wasting the ammo.

"It's pretty big from what I can see," she finally commed. "Not that I can see much." The only sources of light in the hangar were the _Scientia_'s windows and two headlamps that were attached to the EV-suit's helmet.

"How big are we talking?" Rynes responded.

"There are two bubbles bulging out into space where the door was hit directly by the exhaust beams," Akiban described. "Each is about four meters in diameter. The one on the left, uh, ship's starboard side, has burst. The breach is kinda frayed, 'bout one times point seven meters."

"Can you fix it?"

If only she knew. "I'll try."

She took a step forward and, again, almost tripped over the safety rope that was securing her to the _Scientia_'s hull—a precaution in case someone decided to open the inner hangar door. Swearing, she raised her feet higher than was comfortable in the heavy suit, dragging the emergency repair kit behind her. Unfortunately vacuum didn't equal zero-g, the latter clearly being what the suit was designed for.

When Akiban arrived at the outer hangar door, she looked up at the breach. It was level with the _Scientia_'s starboard engine, some three meters above the deck. Very funny, she thought. Naturally, the hangar was devoid of anything that could be used for climbing. The only thing that looked even remotely useful was the conductor arm for core discharges, but firing the engines had not only melted the cart but also welded whatever remained of it to the deck.

"Rynes?"

"Yes?"

"Do you have a ladder?"

"Let me check the inventory."

"Mhm," Akiban made and yawned.

Her omni-tool indicated that while the hangar deck had cooled down pretty fast, the hangar door was still hot, fourteen hundred degrees around the breach and up to three hundred at the edges. She knew from EV/HE[1] training how to fix hull breaches, and therefore she also knew that she'd have to cool the material down before attempting any manipulations. It wasn't going to be easy, but it felt good to be confronted with something she was trained to deal with for a change.

Rynes did manage to find a ladder aboard the _Scientia_, and Akiban went and fetched it from the airlock on the starboard side. She put it up against the hangar door and climbed up. By now she was sweating profusely in the suit, and perspiration was getting into her eyes, burning, even as she checked the suit's life support functions. The self-diagnostics tools showed everything in the green, yet Akiban couldn't shake the feeling that she was being cooked alive.

On top, Akiban clumsily opened the emergency repair kit and removed a small canister of coolant. She attached it to a pistol head and sprayed a thin layer of the heat-absorbing fluid on the steel around the hull breach. It coalesced into a thick gel on contact and immediately reduced the temperature of the material. Breathing heavily, Akiban switched canisters and sprayed a solvent over the edges, removing the gel. She repeated the whole process three more times until the steel had cooled down to a manageable fifty-seven degrees centigrade.

"How's it going?" Rynes commed.

"If I didn't know any better, I'd say the carbon dioxide filters of this suit are fucked."

"You want to come back in and take a break?"

Akiban took a deep breath. "My ass. I want out of this damn hangar."

"Okay."

Akiban blinked the sweat out of her eyes and produced a black roll of isolation mat from the kit. Bit by bit, layer by layer, she covered the hull breach, fixing each segment in place with iso-tape. It was the same roll she had used to tie Kela to the chair on the bridge. Kela was dead. Akiban had killed her. She swallowed hard in order to keep her last meal. Throwing up in an EV-suit was about the second worst thing one could do to oneself. She closed her eyes and shook her head violently, trying to banish the pictures of the bled-out quarian girl from her mind, but more death and destruction manifested, Nakata's half-disintegrated body flying through the air.

"For fuck's sake!" Akiban exclaimed and punched the hangar door. She felt like she needed to hurt someone or break something just to get those thoughts out of her mind. She hit the door again and felt tears shoot into her eyes. It took her several minutes to calm down enough to be able to start thinking about her task again.

When she was finally done, an omni-tool scan confirmed that the hull breach had been sealed successfully. Akiban nodded to herself and climbed down the ladder.

"Rynes, the breach is sealed."

"Okay. Now for repressurizing this thing."

Akiban started dragging herself toward the inner hangar door. "I don't think the _Scientia_'s life support systems will be much of a help here, to be honest. The hangar is too big to fill it with air from the ship within a reasonable timeframe."

"Do you have a plan?"

Akiban realized that her throat was completely dry and cleared it. Simply opening the inner door was out of the question for two reasons: First, the air would explode into the hangar, which was dangerous all by itself; and second, the control mechanism was fried like everything else. "There's a small diamond-blade saw in the repair kit. I think if I make a small cut in the inner door, the air should stream into the hangar from the inside of the station without killing me or damaging the patch on the breach."

"All right."

The saw was a circular rotating blade with a small shield and a casing that held the power cells and translated into a grip that turned out to be notoriously hard to hold on to when wearing EV-gloves. Akiban put her thumb on the activator switch and pressed the blade against the door. Sparks erupted from where the spikes made contact with the metal, but Akiban was having trouble pressing the saw against the door. She realized that her grip was too clumsy, and indeed she had only succeeded in scraping a small gash into the door. After a moment of thinking, she decided to lock the power button in on-position and press the saw against the door with both hands, locking the grip laterally between her hands. She smiled grimly when she felt the blade actually eating into the steel in front of her. Eager to get out of the hangar, Akiban shifted her weight forward and pressed harder against the door.

After a minute of exhausting sawing Akiban wondered how thick the inner door was when suddenly the shower of sparks changed direction with surprising abruptness. Almost blind, she felt the saw being wrenched out her grip. She was thrown backward violently and hit the deck hard. There was a horizontal fountain of white gas streaming into the hangar, which she supposed was good, but when she tried to sit up, a burning pain in the stomach area stopped her. She screamed and looked down at her suit. Amidst thick smears of blood there was a wide gash. The suit had sealed it automatically, but Akiban could feel the warmth of her own blood spreading from what she was sure was an abdominal hemorrhage.

"Rynes…" she managed weakly, had to cough, each contraction sending pulses of agony through her torso.

"You okay? What happened?"

"I think I screwed up," Akiban said in a faint voice, and her mind drifted off into darkness.

* * *

[1] Extra Vehicular/Hostile Environment


	12. Chapter 12

**XII**

Eyes wide open, breathing heavily, Varelius sat upright in the chair of the drone's cockpit. After setting the course to Omega, he had tried to sleep several times to recuperate from the exhaustions of Balance Point, but disturbingly intense dreams kept tearing him out of his rest. In the glow of the holoscreens in front of him he could still see the final images of his last astral encounter: a turian that resembled Varelius too much for his liking, implants sticking out of his body in all places, raised a weapon and shot him at point blank. It wasn't real, of course; that much he knew. But every fiber of his brain had screamed out, and his head still ached—even after waking up.

The aftereffects of being exposed to the geth device, Varelius finally decided and rose out of his chair. Since he was going to arrive on Omega soon, he could just as well check his equipment. His Spectre Gear sniper rifle and pistol checked out fine after he dis- and reassembled them, but the camouflage module of his armor had finally bought it. Unfortunately, he kept no equipment aboard the drone. It served him better as an emergency means of transportation, and anything that didn't belong aboard an outdated cargo drone was likely to tip off sensors scanning for weapons and other combat related gear. At least he had had the foresight to store field rations aboard, a decision he now complimented himself for as he wolfed down several packs.

He only hoped that the old hull was inconspicuous enough so not to raise the attention of pirates or similar. The Terminus Systems were crowded with the likes, and the drone was easy prey. And even though he had made sure the main computer would transmit a truthfully empty cargo manifest upon inquiry, a sufficiently desperate band might try their luck anyway. With his cloaking device out of business, the prospect of battling pirates with small arms in close quarters almost made him cringe. In the end he would probably not only have to fight them off, but also capture their ship in return; otherwise there was a good chance they would simply blow up the drone if it proved too much trouble to capture. He cursed the quarians for running to the Terminus Systems.

Dim light was the first thing Akiban saw when she opened her eyes. While her vision was blurry, she could tell that she wasn't in the hangar anymore. She was out of the EV-suit and lying on her back on a quite comfortable surface. Blinking the blurriness away, she sat up carefully. Looking down, she noticed that she was wrapped in a loose white robe. Whoever had put that on her must also have applied the regenerative bandages that covered her stomach above the navel and her left shoulder.

"Been waking up without my clothes in random places a bit too often lately," she muttered and lifted herself off what turned out to be a medical bed, one of three in the room; the others were unoccupied. Akiban looked around and saw all sorts of medical equipment in the small room that was barely large enough for the beds. The walls and floor were clean and tidy, though they were definitely made of something other than the _Scientia_'s interior trim. Akiban decided that she was not aboard the yacht anymore.

A round of experimental stretching of limbs and rotation of joints revealed no further injuries, though her stomach still ached, and there were marks of a recent infusion on her lower left arm above the wrist.

Akiban was still wondering if it may have been Rynes who had patched her up when the only door of the room opened and two male humans stepped inside. They were both wearing green sets of heavy armor with asymmetrical shoulder guards of a make she had never seen before. One of them stepped in front of her, assault rifle and pistol holstered, knife—also unknown type—sheathed; he had an aged yet handsome face and wore no helmet, revealing the first strands of gray in his dark hair. His green eyes were locked on her intently. The other, a younger man in full gear, assumed a position to Akiban's right at a ninety degree angle from the other, holding a shotgun in patrol position, pistol and knife holstered. Both of them stood well outside her reach, and she realized that she couldn't move anywhere to obscure the firing solution of the guard on her right with the body of the speaker ahead; they clearly knew what they were doing. Out of reflex, she took a step back because being alone in a room with two armed men on Omega was not a situation any woman wanted to find herself in. While she was ready to fight, she doubted that she'd stand a chance.

"You are Lieutenant Sarah Akiban, Alliance Navy Marines," the older of the two stated matter-of-factly.

"That's right," she confirmed, looking at each of them in turn. "Service number Eight-Seven-Two-Two mark RV mark One-One-Two-Nine."

"Yes, of course," the speaker said, his voice now warmer, almost amused. "I was once one of yours, too, you know—fought in the First Contact War myself."

"What happened to 'Once a Marine, always a Marine'?" she wondered.

He snorted. "When you're a non-com combat veteran my age, lady, you don't want to spend the rest of your career behind a desk, taking orders from officers who could be your kids—and all of that for a lousy pay? No ma'am."

There were points Akiban could have argued, but she didn't feel like discussing career choices with a disgruntled relic. She probably wasn't in much of a position to do so, anyway, considering recent developments. "Well, thanks for patching me up," she finally said.

"Don't thank me just yet," he said. "Had I had my way, we would have dumped your unconscious body out of the nearest airlock. Fact is, you shouldn't be here, and neither should Rynes, for that matter. However, she was very vocal about how useful and cooperative you were. And there are people around here who hate wasting good material, human or other. That's why you were brought here and got your booboos treated."

Akiban was surprised and yet thankful for Rynes's effort to keep her alive—for what it was worth. "It's so nice to be appreciated," she said.

"Whatever," he dismissed with a wave of his hand. "Point is: I'm in charge of security here, and I need to know if you're willing to work for us."

"Do I have a choice?" Akiban asked.

"Of course you do. It's yes or no from here on, lady."

"And you'll simply take my word for it?"

A grim grin spread across his features. "Of course not. The medic who patched you up also implanted you with a remote controlled capsule. It contains a neurotoxin that will kill you almost instantly the moment me or one of my associates decide that we have no other option."

Akiban pursed her lips, licking her teeth underneath. In her mind she pictured beating the smugness out of the old bastard with her bare hands. "In that case I suppose I accept your offer. Now mind telling me who it is I've signed on with?"

He drew himself up proudly, resting his hands on his equipment belt. "You may have heard of an organization called Cerberus."

She raised a brow and shook her head. "Nope." She had heard of Cerberus, of course, but nothing more than rumors. From what little she knew, Cerberus was a former Alliance black ops cell gone rogue and classified as terrorist by Navy Intelligence. And that was that.

"We are an organization that has humanity's best interests at heart," he explained. "Unfortunately, our goals sometimes involve going further than the Alliance would with its restrictive rules and regulations, but at least we get the job done. We don't bow to the Council's alien-imposed order, and we work hard to prevent the Alliance from becoming a thrall of a pan-galactic, non-human reign. As someone who as sworn to protect humanity like me, I'm sure you can sympathize. Besides, Rynes also mentioned that you have little love for aliens, which is something that I sympathize with."

Rynes on Balance Point, the overly expensive yacht, the geth device, Cerberus. Akiban's mind exploded with a million possibilities. Varelius had wanted the device for further study for the turians. The quarians had wanted it for the vorcha, or whoever used them as proxies. So maybe Rynes had been sent to recover it for Cerberus, for the good of humanity, of course. There were entirely too many factions that had sunk their claws into the affair, Akiban thought, and not one of them gave even half a shit about what happened to the colonists. She closed her eyes and rubbed her face with both hands so hard that it went all red.

"Yeah, I don't like aliens," she finally said. At least that much was true, though Akiban had never considered herself to be blatantly racist. She had had little contact with non-humans all her life and used to follow the philosophy of judging individuals by their actions, not by their race. And while the events of Balance Point had certainly not kindled her love for other races, Cerberus' involvement in this regrettable affair did put things into perspective.

"Very well," Oldie said. "Do you have any questions?"

"Do you have a name?"

"They call me Sarge around here."

"They still had sergeants when you were with the Marines?" she asked.

"They had drill sergeants. It stuck."

Civilians, Akiban thought. "And this quiet fellow over there?"

"Come one, don't be shy," Sarge barked. "Never talked to a girl before?"

"Uh, Foster. David Foster."

"Nice to meet you, Dave," Akiban said. "Anyway, two more things: How much are you gonna pay me? And can you keep me out of the Alliance's grasp? I'm in some deep shit with those guys."

Sarge smiled. "Your payment depends on the kind of work you do. But don't worry, we take care of our own. As for the Alliance, you are pretty much out of their grasp here. Maybe some future assignment will require a new identity, which we can provide, but that's not for me to decide."

Akiban nodded. "Well then, what are we waiting for?"

"That's the spirit," Sarge said and motioned her toward the door. "Follow me."

Akiban did. As Sarge led her through a series of confusing corridors, she kept trying to figure out what had happened on Balance Point. Varelius had claimed that someone had activated the device on purpose, but any evidence for that was beyond her reach now. Could Rynes have done it as Kela had claimed? It seemed possible, at least. But maybe Varelius had lied, or maybe he had even activated it himself to observe its effects on the colonists; she couldn't put it past him. And there was Kela's assertion that they weren't dealing with a geth device at all. They squeezed past two armored guards in the narrow corridor; they greeted Sarge casually. Regardless of the origin of the device, Akiban had seen what it could do, and she knew that she had to find a way to destroy it. Now that would be difficult, though. She wondered if the talk about an implanted neurotox-capsule was only a bluff, or if they had truly put one in her. It wouldn't surprise her if they had. She suspected that it was activated by omni-tool, which would limit the range to a few dozen meters, but maybe the code or whatever it was could be transmitted via radio as well, which would give it a range of several dozen kilometers give or take, ignoring interference from bulkheads and other signals. She decided that it would be best to just play along for the time being. Maybe they would remove the capsule once they fully trusted her, or maybe she'd find a way to do it without their knowledge. Either way, patience was her best option, and that made her restless again.

After a while they finally arrived at where Akiban supposed they were headed: a small undecorated cabin that appeared to serve as an office, with a table and three chairs inside. Rynes was sitting in one of the two chairs on the door-side of the table, speaking to a man sitting opposite to her. He was about Sarge's age, his face half hidden behind a holoscreen. While he wasn't wearing any armor, his black overall seemed well padded, and Akiban suspected that he was armed as well, just keeping his guns out of sight.

"Look, it's complicated," Rynes was saying. "I didn't plan for any of this. But now that we're here we need to get moving again. Every second my ship is sitting in that hangar is a risk to the cargo, which, as I already explained to you, is extremely sensitive material."

"That you have," the man said tentatively.

"Sir," Sarge said. "The prisoner."

Finally, the man on the far side of the table looked up, and Rynes also turned to look over her shoulder.

"Well, she isn't much to look at, is she?" he muttered through the holoscreen. "But maybe she can use a gun, yes?"

"Miss Rynes was correct. The prisoner is a Marine Lieutenant. I'd wager that she can use a gun, yes. Furthermore, she's agreed to work for us."

"I see."

"I'm glad you're all right," Rynes said into the ensuing moment of silence.

"Thanks to you and your friends, I guess," Akiban said.

"You're asking a lot of me, Rynes," the man said. "You want resources and personnel detached to your operation from my pool, which is, as I already told you, limited. And you're not even going to tell me what it is you're transporting or where you're going with it."

Rynes sighed heavily. "I don't think I need to explain to someone in your position how this organization works, do I? Each cell keeps its stuff to itself. And should cooperation be necessary, everything remains on a need-to-know basis. That's a security precaution that has served us well in the past. I see no reason to disregard it now."

"Well, I do!" the man snapped. "You barge in here with an outsider and potentially dangerous cargo, demand medical attention for her and repairs for your ship—not to mention replacement parts worth several hundred thousand credits! The least you could do is tell me what the hell I'm spending my resources on. It's not like I have a cow I can just milk it from."

Rynes remained quiet, but Akiban could tell that she was tense. Apparently something wasn't going the way Rynes had expected it to.

"Here's the deal," the man said. "You tell me what you're transporting, and I'll allocate all the resources I can spare. How does that sound?"

Pursing her lips, Rynes shook her head. "Fine. I'm transporting a Prothean artifact. My destination is classified, for obvious reasons, but neither me nor the artifact should be on this god-forsaken rock."

"Is that so," the man muttered. "Well, that wasn't so hard, now, was it?"

"So?" Rynes pressed.

"Of course I will help you now," he said in a tone that implied he was hurt at the mere implication of him not coming through with his end of the bargain. "I will put in a requisition order and have the components delivered here. Then we'll take them and our technicians to your ship."

"How long?" Rynes asked.

"That depends on the availability of the components," he replied dryly. "Unfortunately that is a variable value here on Omega. I will make sure you're notified as soon as everything is ready. Dismissed."

"Sir, what about her?" Sarge asked, pointing at Akiban.

"Yes, what about her, indeed?"

"She's my bodyguard and military advisor," Rynes said. "I'd like her to be outfitted accordingly."

The man behind the desk rolled his dark eyes and produced an exaggerated sigh. "Very well. See her to the armory and have her equipped. Just try not to kill our budget, for once."

"Yes, sir," Sarge confirmed.

"Now everyone get out!"

Akiban turned around and followed the others as they filed out of the room through the narrow door one by one. In the corridor, Rynes said, "Meet me in the cantina when you're done. We have some planning to do."

"Will do," Akiban confirmed.

"Foster, take her to the armory," Sarge ordered after Rynes had walked off. "See to it that she doesn't get lost."

"Yes, sir," Foster confirmed. "This way, uh, Miss Akiban, right?"

"That's right, Dave. Let's go."

"Uh, right," he said and turned to lead the way.

For a moment, Akiban considered working for Cerberus and making full use of the benefits that would come with it, but she decided that it was a bad idea if all Cerberus cells operated like this. These people didn't trust each other, and everyone's greatest concern seemed to be their own little bit of turf. Even if their motives were noble, the way the organization was structured, and—more importantly perhaps—what the people working for it had made of it disgusted her. Besides, they'd probably reconsider their job offer once she'd blown the device to its constituent atoms.

The armory was another small room in what Akiban suspected was an abandoned habitat complex. It seemed even smaller than the other rooms because it was stuffed with equipment lockers and weapon racks. There was enough materiel in there to equip at least a full platoon for war. Akiban had to admit that she was impressed.

"Armor variant?" the quartermaster, a tower of a man, asked briefly, making it clear that he had enough on his mind even without her bothering him.

"Medium," she replied.

He nodded, took a scan of her body with his omni tool, and adjusted the padding of a medium armor set to fit her. It was the same type that Sarge and Foster were wearing. "Underwear's in the drawer over there. You can find that yourself, can't you?"

"Sure," Akiban said and walked over to the indicated drawer. She started rummaging through its contents. "What kind of armor is that, anyway? I've never seen this type before."

"Freedom/Hoplite armor. Cerberus Skunkworks produces them for our operatives. You won't find anything comparable on the open market. Massive shields paired with well-balanced protection from physical impacts and tech and biotics. It's a real cheat."

"Sounds good," Akiban admitted as she slipped out of the white robe and into the shorts, bra, and socks she had pulled out of the drawer. She could hear Foster swallow hard and couldn't stop a grin from spreading across her face. They probably didn't get out of base much if the things she had heard about Omega's clubs were true.

"Weapons?" the quartermaster asked, his tone unabated.

"Assault rifle, pistol, and knife."

"Gorgon AR, Harpy pistol. Read the manuals and follow the maintenance guide. If I find you screwed up servicing them, I'll make sure it comes off your pay."

"Yes, sir!" she called out in an exaggerated manner.

"Don't get all funny on me, miss," he muttered and slapped a sheathed knife on the workbench next to her. "Nano-coated combat blade. Cuts through skin, bone, organs, and armor weak spots alike; just don't try it on armor plates or krogans—we get those morons regularly, and it never ends well."

Having just finished putting on and powering up her new armor, Akiban holstered her weapons and inspected the knife. It was slightly longer than the standard issue one she had lost at the fort, perhaps two centimeters, a bit heavier, and the forte of its drop point blade was serrated.

"Gel containers are over there," he said, pointing.

Akiban walked over and filled her armor with omni- and medi-gel.

"Omni-tool?"

"I had a pretty decent Logic Arrest in my old armor if you know where that ended up."

"I've got it around here somewhere," he said. "That's not Alliance standard issue. They still give you that cheap-ass Bluewire crap, don't they?"

"Yeah," Akiban confirmed. "I upgraded."

"Good for you," he said and reached for her arm. With a few quick manipulations he installed it in her left forearm bracer. "There. Anything else?"

She pulled dogtags from a pouch of her old Onyx armor, forcing herself not to think about the Marines who had worn them, and put them into a hard case on her belt. "My implants are toast. They got fried in an EMP incident. I suppose I need replacements."

"Great," he said. "Not my pair of shoes, though. Go Main Medical, tell the doc what you need. They'll take care of it. Anything else?"

"Nah, I think that's all. Thanks."

"Yeah, yeah. Mind getting out of here now?"

At least these guys were efficient, Akiban thought. She remembered the last time she needed to have a helmet visor replaced on an Alliance base. The amount of bureaucracy that went with requisitioning a hundred credits worth of equipment there would probably get you a fleet of warships here.

Main Medical was a small medical bay, yet larger than the one she had woken up in. There were a dozen beds and what looked like sophisticated equipment to Akiban.

"What do you need replaced?" the doctor, a short, blond, almost chubby woman asked. She seemed young, but the dark circles around her eyes made her appear older, worn out; that was never a good sign among medical personnel.

"Class-B Alliance Infantry Upgrade Package," Akiban replied.

The woman made a sound that made Akiban think of a disappointed horse. "The whole package?"

"Yeah, it all got fried."

"Class-B, that's a comm implant, an immune system booster, a hormonal regulator, and emergency dispersal units for medi-gel, right?"

"Yes."

"Do you know the settings for your regulator?" the doctor asked.

"I'll write them down for you." The hormonal regulator was the only implant that required individual setup because it affected the user's hormone balance; it served a variety of purposes, but female personnel mainly used it to bypass problems that came with the menstrual cycle, and as a contraceptive.

"All right, darling. Get out of that armor and lie down on this bed. It'll be about an hour."

"While you're at it, can you remove that neurotox-capsule they apparently put in me?" Akiban asked as she was taking off her gloves.

The doctor laughed. "They tell that story to everyone, sweetheart."

"Right," Akiban said. She didn't believe her.

Like everything else in the Cerberus hideout, the cantina was small and spartan. There were a dozen round tables with four chairs around each, a buffet/bar where meals were served at fixed times, and a snack dispenser—which Akiban immediately looted. Carrying a wild assortment of candy in both arms and ignoring the looks of disapproval from all over the room, Akiban joined Rynes at the table farthest from the entrance.

"Nice to see you've settled in," Rynes commented dryly.

Akiban ripped a pack of chocolate drops open and shoved a handful into her mouth. "Hungry."

"Right. You got your stuff?"

Akiban swallowed and massaged her neck. It was still sore from the surgery, though she had to admit that the doctor had done a good job considering she had butchered the old implants out and the new ones in in less than an hour, and all of that without leaving any scars. "Yeah, got everything."

Rynes looked left and right conspiratively and leaned forward to speak in a low voice. "Does it work?"

Akiban swallowed another handful of drops, taking a moment to understand Rynes's implication. "Oh, yeah, it does. I've run my own diagnostics with the omni-tool you gave me. Everything checked out fine."

Rynes nodded. "Don't trust anyone," she whispered.

"Nothing new there," Akiban said sourly and shoved a bar of dried fruit and roasted oats into her mouth.

"We need to get out of here as soon as possible," Rynes muttered.

Akiban agreed, but she wondered where it was that Rynes wanted to go. She had never told her, and Akiban wasn't going to ask. In fact, Akiban didn't even know what Rynes intended to do with the device in the first place, and that suggested that she had not planned to take it off-world. And that implied that, if she had truly activated it on purpose, she was the one who was observing the effects it had on the colonists; until, of course, the quarians capture the _Scientia _and blew her entire plan. Don't trust anyone, indeed.

"So," Akiban said, keeping her voice casual. "Cerberus, eh?"

"I'm not a racist, you know," Rynes said, her voice defensive. "But I believe in Cerberus' mission. The Alliance just doesn't cut it when it comes to looking after humanity. All the other races seem to have some advantage or another over us. They're all settled into this big bright nice galactic community of theirs, and now that humanity has appeared on the scene, they're doing everything to hold us back. Cerberus doesn't care about diplomatic repercussions, and no human should. The Council has been doing nothing but yanking the Alliance around. They complain and threaten us with sanctions when we do things our way, and they overrule our needs when we turn to them for assistance."

"Yeah, galactic politics is a bitch," Akiban agreed absent-mindedly, wrestling with the wrapping of a candy bar.

"I know this isn't the best of first impressions," Rynes continued. "But Cerberus does look after its employees. Do you know what most xenoarcheologists do? They sit behind desks and review research papers. You never even get to look at a real Prothean artifact unless you're one of the few big fish in the discipline. Cerberus got me out of the office and made me an operative. They gave me a ship I couldn't have afforded in a million years, and they let me do actual work."

Not to mention driving entire colonies insane, Akiban thought, but she kept it to herself. There was no point in antagonizing her only ally, no matter how much she wanted to shove it into her face. Akiban almost crushed a half-eaten candy bar in her hand. She could feel the anger well up in her. Surrounded by enemies, there was no one to trust, no one to turn to. Being trained to lead a platoon and function as part of a larger infrastructure, Akiban felt lost and alone in this sea of sharks who were only waiting to snap off a limb when she wasn't looking. It was exhausting and frustrating.

"Hey! I don't think that's a good idea!" Akiban recognized Foster's voice.

"Shut up, kid!" Another voice, male, closing.

Seeing Rynes peering past her, Akiban turned around to look over her shoulder. An armored man was striding toward their table, his face red with anger, his expression determined. He stopped too close for Akiban's liking and shouted, "What the fuck you think you're doing, noob? Think you're the only one here? Ever thought that someone else might want some of that, too?" He pointed at the pile of candy on the table.

She looked him over from head to toe, chewing. He was wearing the same type of armor as she was, and like everyone else he had left all of his weapons in a gun rack outside the room—a security precaution. Akiban guessed him to be in his early thirties, a handsome fellow with hair that was entirely too long to be practical in a combat situation. His brown eyes glared at her angrily from underneath thick, reddish blond eyebrows. The cantina had gone dead silent.

She locked her gaze with his, still chewing, and reached behind herself, grabbing something from the pile of candy, and held it out to him as a half-serious peace offering. He roared and slapped it out of her hand. The next moment he was lying on the ground, facedown, Akiban on top of him with her knee planted on his right shoulder and his adjacent arm twisted behind his back at a painful angle. She had used his forward motion to pull him down while tripping him over her chair at the same time. He unleashed a litany of curses and invocations, but it soon drowned in his own screams of agony when Akiban spun his arm a bit more in the direction of pain. He tried to free himself from her grasp twice more, failing each time. Akiban had herself positioned in a way that she could hold him down comfortably; the weight of both armors was working in her favor.

She reached for the pile on the table and grabbed another chocolate bar. After ripping the wrapping open with her teeth, she bit off a chunk and put the bar back on the table. She smiled. It was exhilarating. She reveled in the sensation of having defeated her opponent in spite of his initially superior position. A firework of endorphin was cascading through her body even as she sat enthroned upon her vanquished foe. Yet every muscle of her body and every cell in her brain screamed for more.

Akiban rose, now keeping her attacker pinned to the ground with her foot instead of her knee, and stretched his arm and spun his wrist to maintain the pain. When she looked around the room, she saw the other personnel slowly emerging from their surprised states, rising to their feet. She noted that none of them had activated their omni-tool—yet. Snorting, Akiban wondered if she could take all of them. Something inside her definitely wanted her to try. There were six more, four of them armored, the others only wearing padded jumpsuits. She realized that the escalation potential was on their side: They were closer to the door and thus to the weapon rack just beyond it; and there was still the capsule. She had to calm the situation down and perhaps bluff her way out of it. It wouldn't end well for her otherwise, she suspected.

"So, can we leave it at that, or do I need to get rough?" she asked.

The others exchanged glances, looking if anyone was willing to escalate the situation any further. Akiban guessed that there was more going on here. Maybe they were hesitant because the punishment for fighting was severe, and none of them wanted to end up scrubbing the floor with their toothbrush, or something like that.

"Look, I'm sure this all just a misunderstanding. There's no need to fight. We're all on the same side here!" Rynes pleaded.

"Allow me to be the mature one," Akiban said. She grabbed the armor of the man under her by the collar, pulled him up to his feet, and shoved him gently in the direction of the others before he even realized that he was standing again, which sent him stumbling toward them. "If anyone else wants a demonstration, I'm here all day." With that she flipped her chair back upright and sat down, her back to the room.

Rynes sat down as well after releasing a sigh of relief as chatter reluctantly returned to the room. "I'd really appreciate if you could draw slightly less attention to us," she chided in a low voice.

Akiban finished the chocolate bar she had deposited on the table before. "It was an experiment. I swear."

"What?"

"They said something about implanting a capsule containing neurotoxin somewhere in my body as a precaution," Akiban explained. "I don't know if it's true, but if it is, I'm pretty sure the guys in here can't activate it. It's called acquiring intelligence through aggressive recon."

Rynes rolled her eyes. "Great. Just try not to get yourself killed. I don't want to have to do this alone. If they actually put something in you, we can remove it once we're back aboard the _Scientia_."

"Is she even spaceworthy?" Akiban asked.

"Yes. They looked her over when they came to fetch us. All the sensitive external equipment is fried, and the hull's a bit singed, but other than that she's fine."

"Guarded?"

"I insisted, yes. There's a guard of four. Less than I asked, more than they wanted to leave in the first place."

"That's not much," Akiban said. "If the vorcha decide to go looking for their cooked buddies, a guard of four won't be able to stop them."

Rynes closed her eyes. "I know. It was the best I could negotiate, though. Preventing them from spacing you had kind of priority."

"Appreciated," Akiban said and stuffed a handful of chips into her mouth.

After eyeing her for a moment, Rynes chuckled. "So I saved you so you could kill yourself with this stuff?" She pointed at the snacks.

Akiban shrugged. "'No food, no fight' is what they say." She stuffed what little remained of her loot into various pouches on her equipment belt. "Restroom. Be right back."

"Lock the door behind you," Rynes muttered.

Akiban shot her a lopsided glance and headed off. The restroom was right next to the cantina, a few meters down the corridor. It was a haphazardly established unisex affair with toilets separated by plastic boards. There was no way to lock the individual compartments, only small signs that could be flipped to indicate if one was occupied or not. Akiban found herself one that still had toilet paper and sat down. She unholstered her pistol and aimed it at the door. After the show she had put on in the cantina, she thought that Rynes was probably right about not taking any chances. And getting caught with her pants down, literally, would not only be awkward but also dangerous because it gave the enemy every advantage there was.

At least Akiban had some privacy here, though, so it was time to do some scheming. The capsule had to wait, as there was nothing she could do about it. She had scanned herself with her omni-tool after leaving Main Medical and found nothing. The device, however, still had to go. In retrospect, Akiban found it odd that she had not actively thought about destroying while aboard the _Scientia_, but she dismissed the notion because she had been busy staying alive. Now that the yacht was on Omega, Akiban could destroy the device without blowing up herself in the process. Unfortunately, she lacked the means to bring that about. Since the device had resisted small arms fire and grenade explosions in the fort hangar, Akiban suspected that she would need something with more punch. Already reluctant to even give her basic equipment, she doubted that Cerberus would entrust her with heavy weaponry. But perhaps that wouldn't be necessary. After all, the device was sitting right below the yacht's eezo core. If she managed to overload it, the resulting detonation would very likely destroy the device along with the ship. Yet doing so while the _Scientia_ was still inside the hangar was not an option. While the core breach probably wouldn't destroy the whole station, the released radiation might cook everyone on it—too much collateral damage. No, she had to launch the ship via autopilot and program the core to overload itself after a certain time, maybe a few minutes. That should take the _Scientia _out far enough for Omega's radiation shielding to take effect.

Akiban shifted her pistol to her left hand and reached for the toilet paper. The plan was good, but of course it had a catch. Akiban was going to need the yacht's command codes; without them, she probably wouldn't even be able to unlock the interface. And the only person in possession of the codes was Rynes, who probably wouldn't hand them over simply because Akiban asked nicely.

She flushed and walked over to the only sink in the whole restroom to wash her hands. The smell wasn't inviting, but at least the plumbing worked. As the cold water was running over her palms and fingers, Akiban wondered how many of his people the commander was going to send back to the ship once the replacement parts had arrived. Probably not many, she thought, since drawing too much attention was the last thing they wanted, but she expected at least one technician or engineer and an escort at about squad strength. If she wanted to send the _Scientia _out into space and blow her up, she'd have to find a way to get rid of all of them somehow.

When door to the restroom opened, Akiban whirled around, spinning her pistol out of its holster and aiming it from the hip.

"Whoa!" Foster exclaimed, raising his hands as the door closed behind him. "It's just me."

Akiban inspected him for a long moment, and when she saw that he wasn't armed, she holstered her pistol again.

"I told him not to do it, you know," Foster said. "But Miller's got quite the temper at times."

Miller, Akiban thought. Corporal Daniela Miller, 1st Squad, Alpha Fire Team Leader, twenty-two years old, probably KIA—or worse. She splashed water on her face and rubbed it hard. Miller had been there right next to Akiban. They were running for the yacht together, but Miller never made it.

"Don't worry, he'll get over it," Foster said.

Akiban took a deep calming breath. She was glad that the water in her face disguised the tears that had shot into her eyes.

"You okay?" Foster asked. "Your eyes are all red."

"I'm fine," she said.

"Look, if you need someone to talk—" he started saying, but she interrupted him.

"You want to fuck me, don't you?"

Now it was his face's turn to go all red. "I, uh… Is there an answer that doesn't lead to you beating me up?"

She had to smile at that even as a plan started to coalesce in her mind. "You guys don't get out of here often, do you?"

He lowered his hands. "Sometimes, but the boss doesn't like us hanging out at that kind of bar because most of the employees there are asari, and we're not supposed to be into that sort of thing."

"I see," Akiban said and bit her lower lip. Seduction wasn't exactly her game, but perhaps there was a way for her to turn Dave's hormone-driven desperation to her advantage. "Look, I'll strike you a deal. To me it seems like we could both use the ride, but this hideout of yours just gives me the shivers. However, we'll have to go back to the yacht sooner or later—a cozy Cord-Hislop _Imperio_-class yacht. Your boss is probably going to send an escort. If you make sure you're on the mission, I'm sure we can squeeze in a bit of recreation."

"Really? I mean, yeah! Sounds great! I'll see what I can do!" With that Foster rushed out of the restroom without even having relieved himself.

Akiban turned back to the sink and splashed more water on her face. David Foster didn't strike her as a cold-blooded killer; she would know—she was one herself, after all. If that meant that he'd hesitate to shoot her because he still hoped to get laid, then she had possibly just created a weak spot in the Cerberus escort. She shook her head. He was likable enough, but boys like him shouldn't be playing soldier. If it came to it, she wouldn't hesitate to put a round right between his big blue eyes.

Varelius inhaled deeply and immediately regretted it. Omega looked horrible and smelled even worse. To him, it was the very antithesis of Citadel civilization. There was no honor in this place and no order worth preserving. Whoever was the strongest was in charge, which led to the people living like animals. Anyone who could, joined a pack, and everyone else was fair game. Blood Pack, Blue Suns, Eclipse, and of course Aria T'Loak's band of thugs ruled the important parts of the station, leaving the minor habitats and decks for the vorcha and small gangs to squabble about.

It would be difficult to find a single ship amidst all this chaos. Had the quarians docked the yacht at any of the major ports, T'Loak would know about it since it was her people who controlled those decks. But chances were just as good that the ship was in hangar operated by one of the mercenary organizations or even in one of the hundreds of unclaimed run-down ports. And even if someone knew where the ship was, Varelius was certain that the information containing its whereabouts wasn't going to be free. This was Omega, after all, and that meant that everything came at a price.

No, he had to find another way to track down the ship. While he had no name to go by, he had matched the vessel's design with a Cord-Hislop _Imperio_-class yacht. Those ships were expensive and rare enough to be noticed, and thus to facilitate his search.

Wrapped in a gray cloak to disguise his armor and weapons, Varelius set out from the port where he had docked the cargo drone and procured a shipment of minor technical components for cover's sake.

While Omega had no central docking authority, Varelius suspected that there was someone who regularly tracked traffic. It was potentially valuable information, after all, and if something could be turned into credits, there was a market for it on Omega. Perhaps one of the local information brokers was willing to deal. He just had to find one who valued his life more than his business model.

"I have good and bad news," Sarge announced as he strode into the cantina of the Cerberus hideout.

Akiban and Rynes had been summoned for a briefing, along with two technicians and eight of the base's troopers, Miller and Foster among them. Now they all sat on chairs that had been arranged in two rows facing the back wall.

"The good news is that we have just received the replacement parts to repair the ship of our illustrious guests—which means they won't be bothering us much longer." A low sardonic cheer went through the crowd.

"The bad news," Sarge continued, "is that we've lost contact with the fire team guarding the ship. They were supposed to check in with me every fifteen minutes. They've missed their last two reports and haven't been responding to our communication attempts."

Rynes took a moment to process this information, then blurted out, "What? Why wasn't I informed of this?"

"You just were," Sarge said in a dismissive tone.

"You've got to be kidding!" Rynes called. "The cargo is extremely sensitive! If it falls into the wrong hands—"

"Yes, yes," Sarge interrupted her. "Then we're all doomed. I know. You've made that abundantly clear. That's why we're taking an armed escort along with the repair crew."

Rynes shot Akiban a questioning glance. Akiban just shrugged since she didn't really see anything she could do right at the moment.

"My fire team will take an aircar to the hangar and scout the area. Miller, your fire team will take the cargo lifter and follow at a safe distance. Rynes and Akiban will be with you."

"Great," Miller muttered.

"If you don't like it, you can stay here. I'm sure Lieutenant Akiban is perfectly qualified to lead your people," Sarge said, emphasizing her rank.

"Over my dead body," Miller said, shooting Akiban a narrow-eyed glance.

"Good. Any questions?"

"What do we do if we encounter a superior force at the hangar?" Akiban asked.

"In that case I will reassess the situation and decide whether to call in reinforcements or abandon the ship to the enemy," Sarge replied.

"What? You can't—" Rynes started complaining, but Akiban silenced her by putting a hand on her shoulder.

"If they want to run, let them," she said. "We'll just have to find another way."

"All right!" Sarge barked. "Everybody sync comms."

Akiban lazily observed the visor through the neck opening of her helmet and checked in when it was her turn. She wasn't in the least surprised that her call sign was Bitch. She'd let them make their jokes and have their little victories, though. Her victory would come when the device was destroyed, and she wondered how many of them would still be alive to witness it.

When the preparations were done, they all headed out of the cantina and followed the hideout's uniformly narrow corridors to a garage where the Cerberus operation kept its vehicles. There were several types of common four seaters parked in the cramped area, and a bulky cargo loader.

Sarge and his fire team, all wearing Freedom/Hoplite armor, mounted on one of the aircars. Akiban saw Sarge stow a rocket launcher in the trunk of their vehicle of choice, which she noted for future reference, as his four troopers embarked; three of them were riflemen—one of them Foster—and one carried a machine gun, which was essentially an oversized and very heavy assault rifle.

Akiban helped loading the two heavy crates containing the replacement parts for the _Scientia _on the loader's open rear cargo platform. Then she jumped on it herself, not bothering to contend for one of the three seats in the command module. She helped Rynes up and waited for the two Cerberus techs and a grenade-launcher-wielding heavy weapons operator to join them. Finally, she closed the rear ramp and walked across the platform to the front to hit the roof of the command module twice with her fist. Inside were two additional riflemen and Miller, the fire team leader.

The garage door opened, and, after rising into the air, the two vehicles shot out into Omega's pseudo-dusk. Akiban put on her helmet, sealing it with her armor, and leaned on the command module with her crossed arms. As the countless lights of surrounding habitat towers sizzled past, she allowed her mind to drift off. She knew that the past thirty or so hours had stressed her to her limits. She almost smiled at the thought of taking a shower, but the notion of water running down her face brought back memories of the battle at the uplink dish in Balance Point, which made her wince.

She turned around and almost punched Rynes who happened to be standing behind her unexpectedly.

"It's almost beautiful if one can ignore the cesspool this place is," the other woman muttered, absent-mindedly staring into the ocean of lights and pillars of glowing orbs around them.

"Almost," Akiban almost agreed.

An aircar shot past them.

Akiban wondered if she should ask Rynes for the codes, but she decided against it. If she made it too obvious that she wanted them, then Rynes might guess that Akiban planned something she hadn't shared.

"What do you think happened at the hangar?" Rynes asked.

"Hard to say," Akiban replied. "Comm equipment fails sometimes, but a fire team of four not responding is rarely a coincidence. My credits are on the vorcha coming back."

Rynes hugged her arms around herself as the loader slowed down. Sarge's aircar disappeared into a tunnel ahead. "Do you think we can retake the ship?" she asked. Her voice was almost pleading.

"Depends on their numbers," Akiban replied truthfully. "Considering what we know of vorcha, I don't think it'll be that many. We pack quite a bit of firepower here, so I think our chances are good."

Rynes seemed relieved and left it at that, but there was anxiety in her eyes, and Akiban wondered what was wrong with her. She herself felt fairly relaxed in anticipation of the fight she knew was coming. Someone had come for the cargo, vorcha or other, and Akiban saw an opportunity, albeit a challenging one, to play the two factions against each other so that, in the end, it would be her who achieved her objective.


	13. Chapter 13

**XIII**

It had taken Varelius several hours and a few carefully executed disappearances of specific individuals to finally track down an information broker who dealt with starship traffic information but wasn't directly affiliated with any of the major powers on Omega. After all, the Spectre didn't want the mercenaries or even T'Loak to become aware of his presence and activity in their rotten realm; agents of the Citadel enjoyed a poor reputation and were rarely tolerated.

The broker who went by the pseudonym Scope was a volus who ran his operation from a nondescript warehouse in a poor district that didn't even have a name. Varelius suspected that this poor location was the price for working freelance and being forced not to draw too much attention of the big players. But to the turian the difference was negligible: No matter where you went on Omega, it was still Omega—different paint on the surface, same rot beneath.

Scope usually didn't speak to customers in person, like most in his business didn't, but Varelius had enticed him to agree to the meeting with the prospect of a very lucrative deal. Omega plus credits equaled success—the simplicity of greed.

Now Varelius sat in a small, uncomfortable chair in the middle of what he suspected was Scope's office. The chair had been set up haphazardly in the undecorated, windowless room on the upper of two levels of the warehouse. It was largely devoid of everything except dim red light, air, and a large desk, behind which sat the broker on a chair that was so high that it put him on eye level with the taller humanoid species. Of course the desk was closed in the front, Varelius observed, to disguise the fact that the volus's legs were dangling a good fifty centimeters in the air.

"This is rather unusual," Scope admitted between the heavy intakes of breath that were typical for his exosuit-wearing kind. "But your offer was too generous to decline."

"The matter I come to you with is very important to me," Varelius said from his position five meters away from the desk. He knew that the distance was not the only security precaution. While two guards—the only ones he had encountered on his way in—had disarmed him, they had failed to deactivate his omni-tool. He had scanned the entire building and knew that there were generators and projectors that could create a forcefield between him and the broker, probably activated from the desk.

"Certainly," Scope muttered, eying Varelius through his exosuit's yellow-shining goggles.

Unnerved by the volus's expressionless mask, the turian shifted in his chair. "I need to find a ship. Its cargo is of great importance."

"Yes, yes," Scope said. "Do you have any specific information?"

"It's a white Cord-Hislop _Imperio_-class yacht. It's piloted by quarians and probably didn't transmit any IFF, crew listing, or cargo manifest. I suspect the ship was stolen."

"Most ships that come here don't transmit an IFF, Spectre," Scope said.

Varelius's mandibles twitched.

"Of course I knew," Scope continued, allowing smugness to drain into his otherwise laborious tone. "Information is my business, after all. And this specific bit of information is my life insurance. It would have been hard for anyone in my position not to notice the blood trail you have wrought through my field of associates to get to me."

The memories came back to Varelius. He had tortured Scope's contacts for the information he needed, and he had killed them once he had it. All of them, two humans and an asari. Yet all he could see in the haze of unilateral violence was Akiban's face, and at that he cringed, suppressing a fury that made every fiber of his body tingle as if anticipating the kill of unsuspecting prey.

"Murdering those people was unnecessary," Scope pointed out, chiding but not angry. "Replacing them will take time and effort that I could have spent otherwise were it not for your clumsy intervention. However, I am still willing to do business with you, assuming that the sum you initially proposed as compensation for my assistance still stands. It should cover my expenses and even turn out a moderate profit."

Varelius was boiling with rage. He couldn't help but picture Akiban's features on the volus's ridiculous mask. For every moment he resisted the infernal fire inside him that urged him to launch himself at Scope, he was punished by a rising, profound agony.

"I know where your quarry is, of course," the volus breathed. "And I have deleted all records of it from my databanks. Call it a precaution. Also, I assure you that I'm the only one in your reach who has this information, unless, of course, you would like to try your luck with T'Loak, or the Blue Suns, perhaps?"

The device and the quarians. That was what Varelius was here for. Akiban was dead. There was no way the indoctrinated humans at the fort had left her alive. These thoughts gave him some degree of comfort and allowed him to somewhat clear his mind of the haze of seething rage. "The sum stands," he finally said in a tone as neutral as he could manage between grinding teeth and cramping mandibles. "Two million credits, no questions asked."

"Excellent!" Scope whooped. "Please transfer the credits to the following accounts, a hundred thousand to the first, four hundred thousand to the second, five hundred thousand to the third, and two hundred fifty thousand to each of the remaining four."

The wall behind Scope turned into a huge holoscreen, displaying galactic norm identification codes of seven bank accounts. While Varelius wasn't familiar with the peculiarities of this business, he could tell that the accounts were from different banks from all across the galaxy.

"I don't need to remind you to make the transfers anonymously, do I?" Scope said. "It would be most tedious if I had to clear the credits of some connection to Citadel authorities or another."

Varelius remained silent and activated his omni-tool, pretending to initiate the transfer. He didn't have two million credits readily available. And while he had the authority to request these funds from the Council as a Spectre, he had never intended to pay Scope in the first place. He planned to acquire the information from him and kill him, just like he had done with his contacts. So he was punching commands into his omni-tool, hacking into the broker's terminal even as the volus fidgeted impatiently in his chair. Perhaps the data were truly purged from the system, but they weren't Varelius's target—the control mechanisms for the room's internal defenses were.

"What's taking so long?" Scope asked in an urgent tone.

"I have to reroute the credits through proxy accounts to prevent the transfers from getting traced back to organizations openly affiliated with the Citadel," the turian lied while his digital worms were decomposing the software that controlled the defense systems.

"And why is it taking so long?" Scope insisted.

Varelius feared that the volus was suspecting foul play, but all he could do now was play for time. "I also need to alter the timestamps so it doesn't look like all the credits were transferred within a short period of time. It's your safety I'm ensuring here, not mine."

"Fine, fine," Scope breathed, waving short arms dismissively. "Just get it over with. I don't have all day, and you're not my only customer."

"I apologize," Varelius drawled and rose from his chair.

"What are you doing?" Scope demanded.

Without saying another word, Varelius strode across the room and toward the desk, even as the volus was desperately trying to activate the particle field that was supposed to protect him in situations like these.

Varelius leapt across the desk, ignoring the stabbing pain in his hip, and kicked Scope out of his chair. The round volus rolled over the ground a few times from the force of the attack and came to rest on his back, struggling to get back on his feet. Varelius let him, but Scope's legs were too short to get him far in the direction of the door in the back of the room before the turian kicked him in the back and sent him face-first to the floor again.

"Good times are over," Varelius hissed as he spun Scope on his back and, after quick scan, ripped out the omni-tool out of the volus's exosuit.

"I don't… You shouldn't… Please…" Scope breathed, his tone as frantic as it could get.

Varelius placed his left boot on Scope's stomach and shifted his weight to pin him down to the ground. "The ship's location. Now."

"I…" Heavy intake of breath. "If I give you the information, you'll have no more reason to keep me alive!"

Varelius sighed. "I hereby promise to let you live if you give me the information I need."

Scope seemed to ponder that for a moment, or at least that was what Varelius interpreted as the reason why the stubby arms and legs below him stopped squirming.

"There aren't many ships like that," Scope finally said. "The only one that matches your description and isn't associated with one of the major cartels was picked up by sensors nine hours ago before the whole area went dark. Judging from the telemetry data, it landed in an unclaimed hangar somewhere on Level Nine of the Gena District."

Varelius released a triumphant groan, craning his neck and closing his eyes. His hunt was nearing its final stage at last. "What can you tell me about the Gena District?"

"That wasn't part of the—" The protest was cut short when Varelius shifted more weight to press down on the volus.

"The Gena District."

"Yes, yes!" Scope gasped. "The district is situated on the lower levels. It's mostly residential, but only scum lives there. Packs of vorcha and Blood Pack sometimes use it to cross into neighboring areas, but that's it. The hangars there are pretty useless because they're in such bad shape that it doesn't pay to repair them for traffic."

"What of quarians?" Varelius asked.

"It's possible that quarians live in the area," Scope admitted, "but there are no reports of larger communities or indicators that would suggest a hidden enclave."

Although Varelius found it curious that the quarians hadn't sought help from their own kind but had landed in a largely insignificant area instead, he decided not to pursue the topic. Everything would become clear soon enough.

"Thank you for your assistance, Scope. You have been most helpful," the turian said.

"Will you let me go now?" the volus wheezed.

Looking down at him, Varelius said, "I could do that. Unfortunately, you know who I am. And my mission is entirely too important for me to entrust its continued secrecy to someone who lives off selling information."

"What? But you promised!"

Varelius silenced Scope by shifting almost his entire weight to press against the volus's stomach. "It was a lie."

"What if… information… inaccurate…" Scope managed to stammer.

At that Varelius had to admit that Scope had a point: If he killed him now and the information turned out to be wrong, then he'd have to start his search all over again. But then again, by the time he'd be back for him, the broker would be long gone with no trace left behind.

"Worth neither risk nor effort," the turian said. He reached down for a tube that ran from Scope's left shoulder to some device at the back of his exosuit and tore at it with both hands, all the while pinning the volus down with his boot. The tube came loose eventually, and a gas started spraying out of it violently, but then it abruptly stopped. Judging by the screams and helpless squirming, the volus was still alive.

Intending to vent the high-pressure atmosphere Scope needed to survive from his exosuit, Varelius spun him on his stomach. Had he still had his weapons, he could have gotten it over with without making a mess, but now it couldn't be helped. He dug his gloved hands into the thick and sturdy fabric around the device on the volus's back and tore it free with a roar that drowned out Scope's pleading for his life.

"I can't see a damn thing," Sarge muttered as looked through the scope of his assault rifle. His squad had detected eight life signs inside the hangar, but none of them identified as the guard they had left behind, so they were tagged as hostile. Now he was observing the hangar door, which stood barely a meter-wide open, from the balcony of an abandoned second-floor apartment opposite the wide open area between them and the hangar.

Akiban was crouching next to him, also observing the scene through her rifle scope. The radar on her HUD indicated that the contacts inside were moving around busily, reminding her of insects, but she couldn't see anything other than the scorched hangar interior and the _Scientia_'s blackened bow.

Miller and Sarge's fire team leader, a fellow who went by the name of Marcus Sorona, were also with them; the rest of the party, including Rynes and the techs, was waiting inside the apartment.

"They are eight. We have ten combatants," Miller commented. "This is a shitty gamble."

"We need intel first," Akiban muttered, taking down her rifle. "For all we know, this could be kids playing in there."

"Listen, bitch—" Miller started venomously, but Sarge cut him off.

"Shut it, Miller. She's right. We need intel."

Akiban made a face at Miller behind Sarge's back, and the fire team leader silently formed the words "fuck you" in her direction.

Finally, Sarge slid back into cover and leaned against the thick metal plate that served as the balcony's railing. "Here's the plan," he said, looking at each of his fire team leaders and at Akiban for a short moment. "Miller, you'll take your fire team and Akiban down there and find out what's going on. I'll keep my fire team up here and provide you with cover should you need to pull out rapidly. And that's exactly what you'll do if there's anything more dangerous than a bunch of kids playing in there. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sarge," Miller confirmed, and though he was evidently not happy that he was stuck with Akiban again, he kept his complaints to himself.

"What's going on?" Rynes asked when Akiban and Miller returned to the room adjacent to the balcony. "What's happening?"

"There's definitely someone in there," Akiban answered. "We don't know who it is, so we're going to sneak a peek. You're staying here, though."

"Just get my ship back!" Rynes exclaimed.

Akiban frowned at her skeptically. "You all right? Never seen you so nervous."

"I'm fine!" Rynes almost shouted. "Didn't we have an agreement on asking that or something?"

"Hey, that only counted for you," Akiban said, her tone not too serious, which earned her a frustrated groan.

Seeing that Rynes was distracted and uneasy, Akiban decided to try her luck and ask for the codes. "Listen, we don't know what we'll find down there, but I might have to get inside the ship. Can you give me the command codes for the _Scientia_'s systems? They might come in handy."

Rynes started rubbing her hands against each other and looked at Akiban, clearly not sure whether or not she should comply with the request.

"Look, it can only help us retake the ship. Besides, it's not like I can fly away without you or anything. No sensors and comms, remember?"

"Yeah, fine," Rynes finally said, throwing her hands up in resignation. "Activate your omni-tool."

Akiban did, and Rynes transferred the yacht's codes from her own omni-tool to hers. "Thanks."

"My fire team, on me!" Miller shouted.

Akiban joined the other three troopers in forming a semi-circle in front of him. There were two more riflemen, a small, dark-skinned man named Richardson and a pale, bulky woman whose name Akiban didn't recall—Martins or Martinez, or something like that—and the heavy weapons op called Špaček. After Miller had pretty much repeated what Sarge had told him, they moved out.

At the entrance on the ground floor, Miller looked out of the corridor that led back to the apartments and peered around the corner. Akiban activated her shields, guessing that he spotted nothing because he just walked out and started marching toward the hangar. She hissed a vicious curse and grabbed him by the shoulder, yanking him back so violently that he stumbled backward and was forced into a crouch so not to ignominiously drop on his buttocks.

He whirled around, his gaze bewildered at first, then furious. "What the fuck you think you're doing?" he hissed.

For a moment she just looked at him. A deep breath calmed her down enough to speak in an even tone. "No offense, sir," she said, "but there are fifty meters of open ground between us and the hangar with no cover in sight. How about you first check with the other fire team to make sure they're ready to lay down suppression fire in case we come under attack?"

He glared at her for a long moment, then at each of the three troopers, who maintained a sheepish silence, but finally he conceded the point and reported in to Sarge, who confirmed the readiness of his people.

"Happy now?" Miller grumbled.

"Not yet," Akiban said. "If they have proximity sensors like we do, then they'll know that we're coming. But there's still no point in revealing our identity and equipment to them by crossing their line of sight. We should split up and approach the hangar door from the flanks to obscure their vision and firing solution."

"Fine," Miller said. "Akiban and Richardson, you're with me. We'll go far left. Morales and Špaček, you go back around the building and approach from the far right."

Akiban readied her assault rifle and nodded at Miller. "Understood."

During the entire approach Akiban kept her assault rifle aimed at the entrance as she moved and kept checking her HUD for a change in the suspected enemy's movement patterns. She was the only one. Miller and the other troopers crossed the distance in a casual jog, their weapons in the more comfortable patrol position. When they were finally lined up on both sides of the central opening between the two wings of the hangar door, Akiban was sincerely hoping for playing children. On the left side, Miller was closest to the opening, followed by Akiban and Richardson; on the right, it was Morales first and Špaček behind her with his grenade launcher.

Using his position in the front, Miller quickly peered through the opening, and jerked back immediately. Akiban was following all of his movements by keeping her left hand on his left shoulder while she held her assault rifle at a forty-fife degree angle toward the ground in her right; her eyes were on her HUD all the time.

"Shit," Miller breathed.

Shit, Akiban thought. Although she didn't know what he had seen, she could tell that there was a reaction to their presence now. The contacts lined up in a negative wedge formation, the tip facing the outer hangar door, four of them moving on each side toward the inner door. While Miller remained silent, probably unsure what to do, all Akiban could tell was that the formation was too perfect and the movement too coordinated—this was no pack of vorcha coming their way.

Miller's name lit up on Akiban's HUD, which indicated that he was transmitting on the squad's comm channel. "Shit, Sarge. We've got things coming our way! I don't know! Never seen anything like them! They're like huge bugs! What should we do?"

"Calm down, son," Sarge replied. "Are they armed?"

"I don't know," Miller commed.

From experience, Akiban knew when a leader was failing, and this was the case with Miller right now. Therefore, she decided to take over before he got them all killed. After slipping past him, she briefly showed herself in the opening, fired a badly aimed salvo into the hangar, and snapped back into cover. As she had expected, her move was rewarded with return fire.

"Sarge, this is Akiban," she commed. "Eight hostiles are moving in on us. They are definitely armed. Specifications unknown. Those are either turians in freaky armor or something else entirely. I suggest we open the door all the way so you can take them from your position. Please advise."

"Copy that, Akiban," Sarge responded promptly. "Proceed as outlined."

"Wilco. Akiban out." A grin was spreading on her face as her body was flooded with adrenaline. Now the fight was on, and she was becoming its core element. Everything was laid out in her mind: positions, cover, firing solutions, and combat capabilities. She had been itching for something like this for hours, and now she was finally going to get her due.

"Morales! Richardson!" Akiban shouted. "Take a few steps back from the door and keep your guns on the opening! Blast anything that sticks its head out!"

They complied and trained their weapons at the gap between the hangar door wings. Meanwhile Akiban had already shoved Miller out of the way and was moving toward the control panel on her side. As she ran, her mind played and replayed images of the shapes she had seen inside. Whatever they were, their physiques roughly corresponded with those of turians, though they looked strangely insectile, though that could be explained by their armor type, a chitinious brown plating with organic red in between. What was most disconcerting, though, were their helmets with four yellow glowing eyes, which Akiban wanted to believe were just cameras that translated into a full-face display beneath.

"I'm opening the door now!" she called and hit the panel. The controls were in vorcha, but the symbols for open and close were fairly straight forward. "Keep your angles and move back as it goes!"

As suggested by it dilapidated appearance, the hangar door opened only reluctantly, several deformations in the guidance rails causing a deafening screech. Akiban turned back to face the now widening gap and checked her HUD. The enemy formation had now become asymmetrical as three of the contacts on her side were now standing guard around the fourth. The screeching of the door was drowned out by a gut-wrenching hum, and before Akiban could even shout a warning, the metal next to Richardson and Miller went red, then white, and a beam of white and gold exploded out of the door, ripping the shields off the two Cerberus men, and cut them both clean in half right above the hips.

"Holy fucking shit!" someone shouted, and Akiban could see Morales starting to fire blindly at the opening.

"Sarge, Akiban. Two men down. Requesting rocket launcher fire into the hangar."

Although Sarge never acknowledged the request verbally, a rocket sizzled down from the balcony and past the still moving doors. A heavy explosion followed, and Akiban felt the familiar sensation of rapidly dislocating air against her face. She checked her HUD and saw that two of the contacts, the ones closest to the door on each side, had winked out, but the rest of them was still there, moving. Since she was the only one left on her side of the door, she dropped into a prone position and aimed her rifle at the opening to cover the far side corner.

Assault rifle and machine gun fire opened up from the balcony, so Akiban guessed that they must have spotted something from up there, but then the hum of the enemy beam weapon returned, and she started rolling over the ground sideways to dodge, while Morales and Špaček dove for cover. Yet the beam cut through the door much closer to the opening, which was now almost five meters wide, and pulled a glowing arc across the facing façade of the building in which Sarge and his fire team were dug in. Coughing dust out of her throat, Akiban looked over to assess the damage, and what she saw made her swear sharply. Parts of the façade were missing entirely, and the balcony where Sarge's team had been was gone; the beam weapon had cut clean through the building, which was already weakened by decay, and turned a major portion of it into a heap of scrap metal. Akiban checked her HUD, and she saw that only two life signs remained near the ruin.

Swearing again, she dragged herself up to a crouch and yelled, "Grenades! Give 'em everything you've got!"

Špaček nodded in the distance and took a few cautious steps forward. When he was less than a meter away from the gap, he fired into the hangar. The grenade didn't detonate instantly, but instead it bounced off something Akiban couldn't see. It detonated on the right side inside the hangar and took two more contacts with it. Shuffling another step forward, Špaček fired another round, which actually went past whatever had stopped the previous one, and wiped out two enemies on Akiban's side.

Her hope that the heavy weapon operator was among the enemy casualties was quickly vaporized along with parts of the hangar door on the right. Both Špaček and Morales jumped for cover, but they were both caught in the beam: Špaček was ripped apart from left trapezius to right shoulder, and Morales was decapitated even as she jumped.

For a brief moment Akiban contemplated retreat, but the appearance of one of the shapes in the now ten-meters-wide opening between the doors cancelled her plans. She fired her assault rifle, riddling the brown carapace armor of her target with tiny projectiles. At first they seemed to glance off, but then they penetrated, and the thing—whatever it was—went down twitching. Encouraged by the enemy's destructibility and the fact that there was only one contact remaining on her HUD, Akiban sprang to her feet and sprinted toward the retreating end of the door on her side. When she could see the heavy weapon op, she started firing her assault rifle as she ran, but her rounds were caught in what looked like a biotic barrier before they could find purchase. He was already raising his weapon at her, but she was fast, very fast, and closed the distance much more quickly than he had anticipated. Coming in at an all-out sprint, Akiban slammed his beam weapon to the side with her rifle, though she failed to knock it out of his hands as she had hoped to. He fired, and the exposure to the beam stripped her shields clean off her, but her armor remained undamaged. Aware of the fact that her HUD was telling her that her assault rifle was close to overheating, Akiban let go of it and grabbed her significantly taller opponent's weapon with her left hand while reaching for her pistol. He yanked at his gun, tearing it out of her grasp, but at that point she was already firing her sidearm at him. Again, the rounds were caught in his barrier, but then it winked out, and before he could raise his weapon for the kill, Akiban slammed into him in a vicious tackle. They both landed on the deck, she on top of him. The particle weapon lay on the side, and now it was her turn to end it. Yet before she could direct the muzzle of her pistol at her downed enemy, he grabbed the weapon by the barrel and diverted it away from himself so that the shots she managed to squeeze off only hit the deck next to him. Akiban instinctively let go of her sidearm and reached for her knife. She could see him turning the pistol in his hands, spinning the business end toward her, while he was extending his right hand, reaching for her knife arm. She blocked his right with her empty left, and buried the blade of her knife in his inner right eye. He shrieked, so she stabbed again, and again, and again, until her arms were covered in a golden-yellow liquid up to her elbows.

When she couldn't discern any continuing vital activity in the creature she had just killed, Akiban slid off it, breathing heavily, and deactivated her shields. "Definitely not turian," she wheezed. For a long moment she just sat there, catching her breath, as her body lowered the adrenaline level in her blood. When her mind was finally more or less clear of the killing frenzy that had drowned out everything else only moments ago, Akiban collected her weapons and put two rounds from her pistol into the head of each enemy body.

Outside the hangar, Akiban confirmed the deaths of Miller, Richardson, Morales, and Špaček. There were no dogtags to be taken, but those weren't really her people, so she didn't really care.

Surprised that anyone had survived that collapse at all, she walked all the way over to the ruin where the other fire team had been entrenched. Following her proximity sensors, she tracked the two remaining life signs and barely got there to see Foster drag Sarge out of the rubble. With those two being the only survivors showing on the board, it meant that Rynes was dead, though the loss was negligible now that Akiban had the command codes for the yacht. Besides, if she was right and Kela had told the truth about Rynes having activated the device in Balance Point, then she had gotten away better than she deserved.

What irritated Akiban was that Sarge had survived and was conscious. Were he dead or at least knocked out, the problem of the neurotox capsule she still suspected was implanted in her body would have largely taken care of itself. Like this, however, she doubted that she could take him out before he fired up his omni-tool and released the toxin into her system. She had to find another way.

"Reporting all hostiles eliminated. Four friendlies KIA," Akiban said after completing her medical scans of the two men and confirming that they were both in good health, ignoring a few dents and bruises here and there.

"See, son, I told you to jump," Sarge muttered, dusting off his armor with his hands.

Foster, who was still shaky, bent over and vomited on the ground. Akiban put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, you'll be fine," she said.

"What a fucking mess," Sarge muttered as he surveyed the collapsed building. "The boss won't be happy about that."

Too bad for him, Akiban thought and started walking back to the hangar.

"Hey!" Sarge shouted. "Where you think you're going?"

"I need to check the cargo," Akiban replied without looking back.

He seemed to accept that and caught up with her in a jog. Foster was several meters behind them.

"What do you think those things are?" Akiban asked when they walked past the enemy bodies that lay strewn over the hangar deck.

Sarge stopped next to one and dropped to one knee, inspecting the perforated corpse. "Don't know. Never seen anything like it." He prodded it with two fingers. "No turians in freaky armor, eh?"

"No," Akiban agreed.

"Do you think those are Collectors?" Foster asked, looking down at the body.

"Collectors are a myth," Akiban said.

Sarge shook his head. "Not necessarily. But there's no way we can confirm this. We'll take the bodies back to base for further analysis when we're done here."

Akiban shrugged and continued past the _Scientia_ to her stern. The boarding ramp stood lowered and allowed her to peer inside the cargo hold, inside which, to her great relief, she saw the device. It was still there, untouched. She walked up the ramp and spotted four armored bodies piled up against the port bulkhead: the guards, all of them dead. And next to them lay Kela and the vorcha.

"Poor bastards never stood a chance," Sarge commented when he saw them. "Cut down like cattle. Who are the quarian and the vorcha?"

"Long story," Akiban called, walking around the device and inspecting it. When she was out of Sarge's sight, she scanned it with her omni-tool and was relieved to see that it was still inactive. Now she only had to find a way to get it out of there. She shook her head. No, she had to destroy it. After taking off her helmet and clipping it to her belt, Akiban rubbed her face with both hands. She had to destroy it, but Sarge would kill her before she could do anything of the sort. Once more she considered shooting him. Perhaps the sudden attack would startle him sufficiently so that his shields failed and he died before he could respond. But if both Sarge and Foster instinctively returned fire, then her shields probably weren't going to buy her enough time to kill him. And what if Foster also had the ability to activate the capsule? No. Akiban decided that it was too risky to attack openly. In any case, she realized that Foster was the wild card. She had to get him to help her.

"Oh no…" Foster moaned and vomited on the deck of the cargo hold.

"God dammit, pull it together, boy!" Sarge barked.

Akiban emerged from behind the device and called, "Come on, Dave, let's find you some water."

He started dragging himself in her direction from the stern of the hold. His steps were insecure, and he was as pale as starlight.

"Hurry it up!" Sarge shouted.

"You want something from the kitchen, too?" Akiban asked.

"I'm fine. But I won't be standing guard here forever!"

"Right," Akiban replied. "We'll hurry." She slung Foster's right arm over her shoulder to support him and thus dragged him to the habitat deck, and from there to the yacht's cantina.

"Wow, that's pretty embarrassing," he muttered in a coarse voice.

"Your first combat experience?" Akiban asked, opening the cantina door.

"Just guarded and secured stuff so far," he admitted faintly. "Never saw casualties. Never had to kill." He coughed. "Don't think I killed any of them."

Akiban deposited him in a chair at the room's luxurious table and took of her helmet, clipping it to her belt. She proceeded to search the kitchen segment for water. "Don't worry about it," she said. "Combat's not like they show it in the vids. It's just hard to explain to civilians that you can buy it even without making the slightest mistake. Sometimes somebody else screws up; and sometimes no one screws up on your side, but you still get blown to bits because the enemy did a good job or was just fucking lucky."

"Yeah," he said, his tone distant.

When she had found two bottles of water, Akiban joined him at the table. She helped him unseal and take off his helmet, then she handed him one of the bottles. He accepted it silently.

She emptied her own bottle and waited for him to take a few cautious swigs. "How are you?"

"Don't know," he answered.

Akiban had seen that empty gaze before. It was the result of a mind trying to cope with the mental trauma suffered in combat, an emotional and intellectual hangover caused by an overdose of stress hormones in conjunction with frustrating helplessness. It was the point at which most conscious processes lay in suspension and the mind was clouded in a haze of passivity. And although Akiban knew that it would wear off eventually, she needed Foster to snap out of it as soon as possible. A vegetable wasn't going to help her take out Sarge. On a brighter note, at least he was responding to outside stimuli. She had seen worse cases.

After taking off her gloves, Akiban poured some water on her hands and wiped the thick layer of black dust from his face. Then she sat on his lap with her legs around his waist, facing him, and put her arms around his neck. "Anyone in there?"

He raised his head and looked at her, and Akiban hoped that a bit of sexual teasing and physical proximity would stimulate his primal instincts, which, in turn, would help him recover, but all he did was slam his head against her chestplate and start sobbing uncontrollably. Akiban embraced him, resting her cheek on his hair, and quietly facepalmed out of his sight.

They stayed like this for a while, primarily because Akiban had no idea what to do with him. She was caught in the middle of a triangle and parts of her were pulling toward each of its corners. Most prominently, she felt sorry for him—what a picture of misery he was. But she also needed him; Sarge wasn't going to wait for them forever. And to round it all off, he was still a possible enemy. All of it was consuming her patience at an alarming rate.

She ran her hands through his hair and traced the contours of his face until her hands, palms and fingers were framing his jaw, making him look at her. His eyes were red and full of tears, but at least they somewhat focused on her.

"You need to listen to me, David," Akiban said in a soft voice and kissed him on the mouth. "You need to listen to me. I need your help." She kissed him again. "That device in the cargo hold is extremely dangerous. We can't let it fall into the wrong hands. Do you understand?"

Still looking at her, he swallowed hard.

"Do you understand, David? We must get the device off Omega." She planted a tender kiss on his cheek and stroked the sides of his head with her fingers. "Sarge will decide to scrap the operation now. He'll want to take the device to your boss. We can't allow that to happen." She kissed him again. "I've seen what this thing can do. If it's activated, if only inadvertently, it can make everyone in its vicinity go completely crazy. Are you listening to me?"

He responded with a tentative nod.

"We need to take the device to real Cerberus scientists for actual analysis. They'll know what to do with it." She was improvising, but she had to tell him something. "Rynes is dead, but I have her contact information in my omni-tool," she lied. "I have credits, and I know where to take the device, but first we need to get Sarge out of the way. If he kills me with that neurotox-capsule, then everything's lost. Do you understand?"

"Can't you explain—" he started asking, but she cut him off with another kiss.

"He wouldn't understand. You're the only one who can help me. Please, David, help me!" She made her voice sound pleading. "I can't do this without you, David. Please!"

"I don't kn—"

"Please!" She kissed him hard. "All you need to do is stop him from using his omni-tool. Get behind him and grab his arm. That's all it takes! I'll take care of everything else! If you can just help me do this, I promise I'll do everything I can for you. Everything!"

He pondered her words for a moment. "How do we get out of here? Your ship isn't spaceworthy, and the replacement parts are buried under tons of rubble."

At least he had his wits back, Akiban thought, and she had to concede that he had a point. Improvising again, she said, "We'll use the enemy beam weapon to cut through the rubble; it's still lying the in the hangar somewhere. Once we have the parts, we can hire someone to install them. Rynes gave me access to an account with over a hundred K credits on it."

He looked away and then back at her. "Okay," he finally said. "I'll help you."

Akiban smiled as a wave of relief flooded her senses. She kissed him again. "Thank you, David. Thank you so much! You won't regret it. I promise!"

After pulling him to his feet, Akiban shuddered at herself even as she watched him walk out of the cantina. Never before had she been this disgusted at her own behavior. She would have rather had sex with him than faking the pseudo-feminine damsel-in-distress stereotype; and even though she was aware that her actions were probably necessary for the sake of her mission, she'd just as soon forget the encounter and never be reminded of it again.

Foster was already halfway across the cargo hold and just passing the device when Akiban stepped through the doorway. She saw Sarge standing at the very stern end of the deck at the top of the open boarding ramp, his back turned to her. With a sniper rifle this would have been an easy shot, she thought: a static target barely thirty meters away, completely oblivious of the danger it was in. As she followed Foster, Akiban imagined placing the round right between Sarge's neck and the base of his skull. The round would miss the solid collar of the backplate yet strike below the hard parts of the helmet, shattering the target's neck and splintering the skull while causing substantial trauma to brain and surrounding tissue. It would proceed to puncture the trachea and esophagus and finally exit in the front and tear out the throat. It wouldn't be pretty to watch, but Akiban felt that it was a decidedly better kill than the brawl she had put Foster up to.

"Sarge!" Foster called, tearing Akiban out of her murderous imagination. "I think she's trying to kill you!"

It took Akiban two full strides to comprehend what had just happened. Anger exploded throughout her mind like a firestorm. She snapped her shields on, not bothering to put on her helmet, and was already reaching for her assault rifle when Sarge whirled around. She dropped into a crouch as the weapon extended in her hands, and pulled the trigger. The rounds cut the air next to Foster and made Sarge's shields flare under the stress of the impacts. Although Akiban was sure that she had not hit him, Foster dropped to the deck and stayed down. She kept firing at Sarge, who had staggered back and onto the ramp and was now only visible from his knees upward. When more of her rounds hit him and his shields winked out of existence, he dropped out of sight.

Akiban let go of her rifle and launched herself forward. Knowing that she was dead, her muscles contracted with the power of desperation. Each stride seemed to last an agonizing eternity even as she flew across the deck at inhuman speed. Everything in her vision blurred except for her goal. Somehow she felt none of the exhaustion of the past hours, but it didn't matter since she was going to die any moment. There was a helmeted head and an arm, a shoulder, another arm, and an omni-tool. Akiban propelled herself into the air and flew, suspended in the air for what seemed forever, to come down on Sarge's arms with the full weight of her body and armor. Something cracked underneath her, plate or bone—she didn't know, didn't care. Sarge's roar suggested a fracture, but Akiban remained oblivious. She ripped her pistol from its holster, shoved it between his visor and chin guard, and fired. She fired several times, many times. How many times, she couldn't tell afterward, but it was done. There was less head than organic red goo left in Sarge's helmet.

Akiban didn't know how she was still alive. The insanity of the moment ebbed away, and she slowly rose to her feet. She took a deep breath and just stood there for a long moment as if to make sure that she wasn't dying of something inside her. After a while, the sound of a man sobbing penetrated the frenzy that lay like a thick film over her senses. She turned around and saw Foster lying on the deck next to the device, curled up in a fetal position, crying.

Akiban approached him, only to realize that he wasn't responding to her presence at all. So she grabbed him by the collar of his armor, dragged him to his feet, and smashed him against the device. The weapons holstered on his back gave off a metallic thud, then his sobbing resumed its role as the dominant sound in the hold again.

"You fucking piece of shit," Akiban muttered as she pressed him against the device's surface, not to harm him but rather to hold him upright because his limbs were completely slack. Even his head hung loosely forward, only moving slightly when he trembled.

Anger boiled inside of Akiban, overshadowing everything else she might have felt or thought about Foster earlier. She was utterly disgusted by his treachery of her, and her stomach cramped at the memory of having kissed him. And although he was entirely at her mercy now, she felt no pity for him at all anymore. "I don't know how close I just came to buying it thanks to you," she hissed, "and it's better for you that I'll never know, or I'd probably have gutted you with my knife already."

He didn't respond; in fact, he didn't show any distinct reaction at all. And now Akiban started wondering what to do with him. On the one hand, he was harmless and couldn't do anything to the device. She squeezed her eyes shut. He couldn't stop her from destroying the device. On the other hand, he had betrayed her. He had lied straight to her face even as she was caring for and caressing him. At that thought, another wave of anger welled up inside her. Now she couldn't hold back and punched Foster in the face so he went sprawling on the deck. Not feeling any better, she kicked him in the side, even though she realized that it wouldn't cause much damage. She kicked him again and screamed.

"I'm sorry," he whimpered, not looking at her.

Akiban snorted and kneeled down next to him. "It's okay," she whispered, stroking his hair. "I forgive you." Smiling faintly, she shoved her pistol under his chin and shot him in the head.


	14. Chapter 14

**XIV**

For a long time, Akiban felt as if suspended in absolute limbo. Somewhere in her mind she was aware of her surroundings, but none of what her eyes emptily gazing eyes perceived drained into her consciousness. Her stomach was raging with hunger, but she couldn't mobilize the will to eat. Her body was begging her to lie down and rest, but she wouldn't even close her eyes other than to blink once every eternity. She just sat there, hunched over Foster's body, still holding on to the weapon with which she had killed him. Deep inside her Akiban clung to the hope that if she preserved the current moment forever, the realization of what she had done would never catch up with her.

But it did, and tears filled her eyes and started streaming down her expressionless face. Akiban had killed a helpless boy. And while she didn't know what twists of fate had driven him into the hands of Cerberus, she understood one thing perfectly: He lay dead at her hands in a place he probably never wanted to go, sucked into a situation that was utterly beyond him by powers he couldn't affect. Yet the worst thing for Akiban was that her pity wasn't directed at him but at herself. He was dead, but she would be haunted by this and other moments for as long as she lived.

"Imagine my surprise!" a flanging voice exclaimed.

Akiban snapped out of her ruminations, unconsciously tightening her grip on the pistol in her hand. She looked up and discerned a cloaked shape standing at the top of the _Scientia_'s boarding ramp.

"I came here in search of quarians and a geth device they purloined," the voice continued. "And what do I find? I find Lieutenant Akiban amidst a field of corpses."

Only slowly did it dawn on Akiban who it was that was speaking to her, but with the realization came a flood of hatred that engulfed her mind. "Varelius."

The turian took two strides into the cargo bay and discarded his gray cloak, revealing his blue and white armor. A sniper rifle and a pistol were safely holstered in their slots, the former on his back and the latter at his hip, while his arms hung loosely at his sides.

"Indeed," he confirmed and reached for his rifle.

Akiban staggered to her feet and snapped on her shields. Revitalized by the burning rage inside her, she switched weapons and allowed a feral grin to spread across her face. Never in her life had she been as certain of anything as she was now of the absolute necessity of the turian's death.

Still holding his sniper rifle at patrol position, Varelius said, "I hadn't dared to hope for your survival to have the chance to end you myself, though I must admit that it was not absent from my thoughts."

Akiban decided to let him talk in order to assess the tactical situation, but it was hard to think with the seething fury in her that begged and commanded her to just throw herself at him. His sniper rifle was definitely his greatest advantage over her, though she doubted that he'd make it as easy as to just kill her with it—she knew she wouldn't in his place. No, she had to get in close.

"Let's end this!" Varelius shouted and raised his weapon.

Even as she was aiming at him, Akiban dropped sideways into an asymmetrical crouch, coming to sit on her left foot while her right leg was extended, and barely believed that his shot missed her. She fired her assault rifle, spraying his shields with rounds, but they resisted her initial salvo. The turian fired again, and this time his round found its mark. Akiban couldn't tell where exactly she was hit, mostly because she only recalled everything spinning around her in a blur followed by an impact when she found herself slacking against the forward bulkhead of the cargo hold. It took her a long moment to recover her senses, her sensation being dominated by a searing pain in her left shoulder and nausea.

Before she could even vomit, she realized that her feet were off the deck and that Varelius's face was only millimeters away from hers, which further subverted her dominance over her stomach. He was pressing her against the bulkhead, his hands firmly clasped around the collar of her armor, his elbows forcing her upper arms into a horizontal line and thus preventing her from reaching for her weapons.

"You cannot fathom how much I wanted this," he said.

"Bite me," she retorted and kicked him between his legs. The attack all of itself shouldn't even have hurt him through his armor, but he grunted and slacked in his stance. "Balls? Nah, can't be," she wheezed.

Varelius roared and lifted her higher, spun her around until she was head down, and slammed her down onto the deck. Akiban barely managed to move her arms in the way to dampen the impact, but she failed to prevent her head from hitting the deck hard, which made stars dance around her vision. Not waiting for her to recover, Varelius kicked her in the stomach, but her armor absorbed most of the force. Still upside down but now with a little more room to maneuver, Akiban kept her lower back against the bulkhead and kicked back at him with both legs, or rather awkwardly extended them with as much force as she could. She caught him square in his lower body armor, which was rewarded with an agonized grunt of his. He staggered back, visibly favoring his right leg.

Akiban dragged herself back to her feet and reached for her pistol, but he was already grabbing for his own. Neither of them aimed well, yet both of them managed to squeeze off a quick shot. While his round hit Akiban in the chestplate and slammed her back against the bulkhead, hers never reached him, though it made his shields flare and wink out. With her own weapon aimed into oblivion and his still trained at her, Akiban pushed herself off the solid steel behind her and threw herself at Varelius. She felt a round graze her at the shoulder, but then her tackle was already connecting with his hips, and they both tumbled down to the deck in a chaotic knot of limbs and groans.

Lying on top of him, Akiban was groping for her pistol, which she had lost hold off, but Varelius recovered quickly and swung a lateral punch at her temple. Dazed by the hit, she slid off him. With an awkward move that kept all stress off his right leg, the turian spun her on her back and swung himself on top of her, locking her torso between his legs. Akiban came out of her confusion and gave up on the pistol. Instead she drew her knife and slashed at Varelius's face. He blocked the attack by interposing his pistol and grabbing her wrist with his left hand. Her right hand and knife now locked in the turian's grasp, Akiban reached up with her left in the hope of denying him the range of movement needed to aim his sidearm down at her, but to her surprise he let go of the pistol and wrapped both of his hands around her right. The tip of the blade began turning toward her face as Varelius wrenched her wrist around, though Akiban managed to prevent the weapon from plunging into her throat by bracing her left hand against her right forearm. But then Varelius shifted his weight forward, and the knife started descending. The more her arms bent, the greater the strain on her muscles became, and even as the tip of the blade was only millimeters away from her throat, she trembled and groaned in exhaustion.

Akiban could see that Varelius knew that the only direction the knife would go was downward; his mandibles twitched in anticipation of the long-desired kill. She closed her eyes and felt him lean forward even more to finish it. Knowing that she couldn't dodge the blade and topple him at the same time, Akiban decided for effect over protection. She changed the direction in which her arms were pushing from up to left, thrusting her hips up against his crotch simultaneously. The blade sliced through the soft collar of her armor and dove into her neck until it was stopped by her backplate. She screamed, but Varelius fell over, still holding on to her right hand with both of his, and planted his face on the deck. Having neutralized his leverage, Akiban ripped the knife out of herself and his grasp and blindly rammed it into his crotch. The blade slid off the lower-body guard, but then it penetrated the softer fabric at the transition from hips to leg armor and sunk in all the way to the hilt. Varelius let go a savage howl and clutched his hands between his legs.

Feeling something warm spurt over her hands even as the smell of medi-gel shot into her nostrils, Akiban tore the knife out of him—which earned her another scream of his—and rammed it in again. While she still couldn't see anything with Varelius's chestplate pressed against her face, she was quite certain that her second thrust had severed a finger. Not waiting for her opponent to recover, Akiban pulled the knife out again and squirmed out from under him.

And not a moment too soon. Groaning in pain, one hand still pressed against the wounds between his legs, Varelius was already reaching for his pistol that lay on the deck next to him. Akiban, her face a mask of agony, her left hand clutched to her neck and her right holding the knife that was now coated in both human and turian blood, took a step toward Varelius and kicked the weapon out of his grasp before he could fire. The pistol skittered away, and the turian started rising to defend himself. He was barely on his knees when Akiban dealt him another kick, this time planting it to the side of his head. Hit, Varelius spun around from the force of the impact and dropped flat on his stomach. She was over him in an instant, intent on pressing her advantage, and pinned him to the deck with her left knee against his back. Since he didn't resist, Akiban suspected that he was knocked out, but she wasn't going to take any chances. With the high collar of his armor shielding him rather well from her, Akiban stabbed at the only target she had: his head. She raised the knife high into the air and plunged it down with all the strength she could mobilize. Varelius's body twitched as the blade sunk into his skull and brain, then he lay unmoving.

A medical scan Akiban conducted found no vital functions in the turian. Still breathing heavily, she dragged herself to his pistol, picked it up, and put two rounds in his head for good measure. After holstering the weapon, she dropped to the deck and started laughing. What started as a mild chuckle soon turned into a mad roar. Akiban couldn't help it. It was as if someone had injected her with a drug. There was nothing to laugh about, yet any rational thought was drowned out by elation and joy she somehow knew weren't her own. Her stomach cramped and her neck, which was mostly numb thanks to the medi-gel her armor had deployed automatically, ached dully. She lay flat on her back with her limbs stretched out, the boom of her laughter reverberating throughout the cargo hold.

When the lights went out and everything was left in an eerie blue glow, Akiban barely noticed it. Her mind was utterly in the grasp of relief and joy, so much that she didn't even realize that she was reaching for the pistol on her hip. As the blue light began to pulse, the weapon slowly wandered up to Akiban's head, and by the time she suspected that something was wrong, she was already pressing the gun's muzzle at her temple. She tried to pierce the veil of confusion that suddenly engulfed her mind, wondering where she was and what she was doing, but organized thought eluded her. But somehow the haze that clouded her thinking was familiar, and finally Akiban recognized it for what it was: the effects of the device.

"No!" she screamed and barely managed to tear the pistol away from her head before her index finger pulled the trigger as if with its own murderous intent. The round went off harmlessly, ricocheted off a bulkhead somewhere, and vanished.

Akiban's triumph of will did not last, though. An agony exploded in her head like needles stabbing into each and every single cell in her brain. The pain was so intense and complete that at first Akiban thought that it wasn't her who was experiencing it at all, but then the perfection of it came crushing down on her, and she screamed, writhing on the ground, clawing at her scalp as if tearing out her brain would somehow ameliorate her suffering.

"Organic creature," a voice said, and it was as if the very fabric of space spoke to Akiban. It came from nowhere and everywhere at once; it was unspoken yet infinitely loud. It was the big bang and absolute zero, infinite like space yet dense as a singularity. "You were evaluated and you have passed. Now your usefulness has expired."

"Who… What…" Akiban stammered, unable to focus her thoughts in her bursting head.

"You cannot comprehend that which you face. Your resilience and driven nature elevate you above the other species of this cycle, yet your existence pales before our infinity. We have always been. We are. We will always be. And now the time has come for you to end."

Akiban didn't understand. She didn't know what was happening. A part of her longed for the pistol. It was tempting, an easy way out. But she wasn't one for easy. Evaluated. It was just another test. The pain didn't matter. The absence of pain was just the illusion of comfort, the presence of pain the absence of illusion. A pained smile spread on her lips as she started crawling toward the bridge.

"Your resistance is founded in ignorance," the voice droned on. "Like many before you, you battle that which cannot be defeated."

Her vision blurred and with rivulets of blood running out of her nose, Akiban dragged herself into the cargo elevator and raised it to the habitat deck. When the door slid open, she resumed her crawl toward the bridge. While she wasn't moving fast, she was making steady progress. Her muscles were responding only sluggishly to her commands, but she forced herself to keep going. Most of the way she kept her eyes closed because otherwise everything started spinning. She looked up occasionally to make sure she was taking the most direct way, vomited violently the first two times, then only retched and gagged since her stomach was empty.

"You will submit to the inevitable," the voice boomed as Akiban reached the stairs that led up to the bridge.

Akiban ignored it and started pulling herself up the steps. Although the pain was still there, it seemed more distant to her now, its omni-presence diminished. Or maybe she was dying and didn't feel it as prominently anymore because of some damage to her brain. It didn't matter. She would keep going as long as her muscles worked.

At the top of the stairs Akiban activated her omni-tool and manually overrode and shut down her armor's automatic medi-gel dispersal system. She was bathing in the stuff by now, and its anesthetic effect was numbing her nerves and making motoneurons unresponsive. Coughing, she reached up to the control panel above her and opened the door.

"You cannot win," the voice said as Akiban pulled herself into the command chair.

"Will you shut the fuck up already!" she screamed with tears running down her cheeks. The exertion made her retch, and she coughed up blood. Groaning, she activated the command interface and transmitted Rynes's command codes from her omni-tool. When the ship accepted them, Akiban used assistant software to create a macro:

Sequence start

Idle 120 s

Initialize mass effect core

Set mass effect field output to 100%

Fire ventral maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s

Fire dorsal maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s

Fire port maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s

Idle 10 s

Fire starboard maneuvering thrusters for 0.5 s

Fire rear maneuvering thrusters for 30 s

Set main propulsion power output to 100%

Override: mass effect core emergency shutdown

Idle 120 s

Set mass effect field output to 9999999%

Sequence terminate

Sitting hunched over the left armrest of the command chair, straining her eyes to focus on the holoscreen right in front of her, Akiban was fairly proud of what she had created. The firing times were estimates, uneducated guesses at best, for she had no idea how long the ship needed to yaw hundred eighty degrees, but with the yacht's external systems gone, there was no way to program the autopilot to just fly it somewhere. Similarly, the command she hoped would overload the mass effect core was a shot in the dark, but in the worst case she'd end up shooting the _Scientia _and the device into deep space, and a drive core discharge would cook the ship eventually, hopefully before anyone decided to board it and shut the whole thing down; at this point, though, she was beyond caring.

After coughing up more blood, Akiban initiated the macro and dropped out of the command chair and onto the deck. She regretted immediately only giving herself two minutes, but she guessed that she wasn't going to live much longer than that, anyway. Her body felt like it was decomposing from the inside now that her armor wasn't bathing her in medi-gel anymore. The pain in her head was as bad as ever, and she was still bleeding from her nose, but at least the voice was silent. Now all she had to do was depressurize the hangar and open the outer hangar door.

Instead of returning to the cargo hold, Akiban dragged herself to the airlock on the habitat deck on the ship's starboard side—the same she had used to leave the ship earlier—and jumped out. Even though the airlock was only some two and a half meters above ground, Akiban hit the deck hard, her muscles barely dampening the impact. Recovering, she was fairly certain that she had broken her right wrist, but she only registered it intellectually as the medium of agony that surrounded and permeated her made any pain she felt negligible.

By the time she had crawled past the bodies of the unknown aliens and reached the inner hangar door, Akiban's vision was going from blurred to blacking out occasionally, and she had coughed up more blood. She also felt a crushing pressure on her ears which made her head spin, and she found it not only painful but outright difficult to breathe.

When Akiban finally reached the control panel, she pulled herself up to her knees with her left hand and hit the control that closed the door. Under screeching protest, the mechanism responded and the hangar door wings were set in motion. Akiban had to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment to regain focus, and stared at the control panel for a long moment. The controls for close, stop, and open were, while in vorcha, easy to decipher. However, there was nothing she recognized as a command to vent the hangar or open the out door. She wondered if that could even be done from this panel.

The inner door shut while Akiban was still leaning over the controls, trying to make sense of them. Blood from her nose dripped onto the panel and she tried to wash it away frantically, though she only succeeded in smearing it all over the console. After a few attempts at cleaning the panel she gave up on it as everything she tried only seemed to make it worse. With a heavy curse, Akiban slacked against the bulkhead. She knew that if the outer hangar door remained closed when the _Scientia _fire her engines, then the yacht would bounce off it as it wouldn't generate any kinetic energy with its mass effect fields at full strength. On her way out, Akiban had lost track of time, so she checked the hangar interior with her omni-tool for emissions. There was nothing yet, but there soon would be, she thought, and realized that she had screwed up.

As she was staring at the orange-golden holographic device, an idea occurred to her, painfully obvious, but then her mind wasn't exactly working at peak performance. She linked the omni-tool to Omega's extranet uplink and downloaded a translator for vorcha. Then she took a picture of the panel with her omni-tool and ran it through the software, which automatically recognized the letters and translated them for her. She accessed additional commands, and had to use the translator again. There was nothing about a venting procedure in this menu, but there were the outer door controls. Relieved and too exhausted to bother looking any further, Akiban just hit the control. A warning popped up, something about the hangar still being under pressure and the atmospheric containment field not responding, but she selected something that her omni-tool translated as emergency override. There was low rumble, then everything trembled.

Hoping that it was the _Scientia _that had scraped the door on her way out, Akiban allowed herself a strong dose of medi-gel, and as the burning pain in her head started to subside, she finally fell asleep.


	15. Epilogue

**Epilogue**

Akiban yawned heartily and ran her fingers through her short hair. She was lying on a comfortable soft bed with white sheets. Opening her eyes, she looked at the ceiling of the small apartment and scratched the medi-gel-secreting bandage on her neck which covered the wound Varelius had inflicted on her; he had largely severed both heads of the sternocleidomastoid muscle but missed the external carotid artery. Akiban had undergone surgery, and the doctors assured her that there would be no lasting damage, but sometimes the blasted bandage itched, making her want to tear it off and ram the knife back in there.

She sat up on the bed and looked out of the bedroom's window. It was still day on the Citadel Presidium, probably late afternoon, she guessed. She got to her feet and stood at the window, resting her hand against it. She knew that she could open it if she wanted to, but beyond there was a forcefield that would prevent her from leaving. Akiban was under arrest, after all.

Following the events on Omega, she had patched herself up and used Rynes's credits to return to Alliance space. There she had used the earliest opportunity to report in to the Navy. At first they had thought she was crazy, but when she had insisted—rather forcefully—they had taken her into custody and transferred her to the Citadel for questioning. Why she was living in a comfortable apartment with no more than two Marines guarding the door was beyond her, but it was better than the prison cell she had seen herself ending up in.

She had written a detailed report on the events in Balance Point and on Omega, and saw it confiscated by officers who had never even so much as told her their names. It irritated her that she wasn't allowed to go anywhere or speak to anyone, but there wasn't really anywhere to go since she spent most of her time sleeping, recovering from her recent ordeal.

The worst thing for her was that she wasn't told anything. She didn't know what was going to happen to her, if any charges were going to be pressed, or what her options were. Upon inquiry, she had at least been told that the rest of her platoon and the _North Cape _survivors had been evacuated off Parrin IV, but of course she was refused contact with any of them. And while she suspected that the whole affair had kicked up a huge fuss, the secrecy around it was making her twitchy. In moments like these she doubted her decision of returning to the Alliance.

She took a quick shower, definitely the best thing of her imprisonment, and cooked herself a meal, fried chicken breast and pasta, the second best thing. She had barely finished eating and cleaned the dishes when the doorbell rang.

It wasn't that she could have refused entry, since she wasn't in control of the door, but at least most visitors had the courtesy of announcing their presence instead of just barging in.

Akiban looked down to check if her uniform was in proper order. She had been issued a complete set following her arrival on the Citadel, but no rank insignia, unit identifiers, or name tags. From a bureaucratic point of view, she didn't exist. After pulling down her shirt to straighten it, Akiban stood in the middle of the living room in plain sight of the door.

Then the door opened and a man stepped inside. He was slightly taller than Akiban, dark skinned, and wearing his hair military short. What struck Akiban the most were his admiral's rank insignia. Instinctively, she snapped into attention and saluted. "Sir."

He returned the salute. "At ease, Lieutenant."

She assumed parade rest.

He was the highest ranking officer she had ever seen up close by a wide margin. And he was also the first to visit her without a contingent of armed guards in two. After proceeding deeper into the living room, he sat on a black couch facing the window. Akiban took the hint and sat on a chair opposite of him.

"I'm Admiral David Anderson," he introduced himself.

Akiban winced at the name.

"Is something wrong?" he asked.

"No," she said. "You just share the name of someone I crossed paths with recently."

"A friend?"

"The biggest fucking moron ever. Sir."

That elicited a warm chuckle from him. "Lieutenant, I've read your report on the events on Parrin IV. I must say I was quite impressed."

Akiban's brow rose. "Impressed? You mean by my creative writing?"

He smiled. "It does seem crazy, doesn't it? However, what you experienced with what you refer to as the device in your report was not a first encounter. All of this is highly classified, of course, but your descriptions match a phenomenon we are aware of. It's called indoctrination."

"Indoctrination," she repeated. "That's what Varelius called it. But he pretended that he didn't know what was going on."

"The turian Spectre," Anderson concluded. "I took the liberty of removing any mention of him from the report. Since he was never actually seen in Balance Point, we won't have any trouble denying involvement in his disappearance. It would be best if you didn't mention him to anyone, either."

"I understand," Akiban said absent-mindedly. "But there is a chance that he communicated with the Council while on the planet."

"Your report stated that much, yes," Anderson agreed in a grave voice. "But the Council doesn't seem to be aware of any of this. Trust me, I'd know. Councilor Udina would have been most displeased had he been confronted with this information unprepared. As far as we know, the Council, except for Udina, of course, is oblivious to the Spectre's fate. We intend to keep it that way."

"I see," Akiban said. She was glad that keeping her killing of Varelius under wraps coincided with the Alliance's diplomatic interests. They could have thrown her as a bone to the other Councilors as well, but she suspected that there was more to it. For some reason the Alliance wanted to hold on to her. "Sir, there's something I don't understand."

"Go ahead, Lieutenant."

"Why are you here? Why am I here? I should be in a prison cell, awaiting trial on charges of manslaughter, gross insubordination, and desertion. What's so damn important about this whole affair that gets me tucked away on the Citadel, questioned by who knows how many dark coats, and earns me a private chat with an admiral?"

Anderson nodded and leaned forward. There was a pained severity to his gaze. "Let me start with why you are here, Lieutenant. Regardless of what the Council's official position may be, I and a few others firmly believe that the dreadnaught which led the geth fleet in its attack on the Citadel was what we call a Reaper. While we still know very little, there is reason to believe that the Reapers are a race of sentient machines that wiped out the Protheans fifty thousand years ago, and that we've barely escaped the same fate—for now. In my opinion, the Reapers are the single greatest threat to galactic civilization, and they are still out there. You are here because you've made first-hand experience with Reaper technology. You have witnessed indoctrination and a number of other effects, and according to your report, you've even conversed with a Reaper mind. Considering our lack of intel on the enemy, you are an expert, Lieutenant."

"Wait a moment," Akiban said, holding up a hand. "You mean that all this talk of some invincible 'we' who are allegedly infinitely superior to us and are going to wipe us out blah-blah is true? I thought I had finally lost it when I heard that."

Anderson's stern expression contrasted her incredulous grin. "There is no definite evidence," he said, "but there are signs that support these claims. First of all, the Protheans disappeared at the apex of their civilization for reasons that have been a mystery ever since we knew that their kind existed. Second, the Citadel Fleet and parts of the Fifth Fleet lie in ruins. And while it's conceivable that the dreadnaught, Sovereign, was constructed by the geth, the ship itself was recorded making claims similar to the device you encountered.

"The Council wants it all swept under the mat to prevent the spread of panic and economic collapse, of course, since their chief concern is stability. But I'd rather err on the side of caution, especially with the existence of civilization possibly at stake."

Akiban nodded, processing his words. "And how do I fit into all this?"

"I have an offer for you, Lieutenant."

"An offer, sir?"

"A way out," he corrected. "As it stands, your career with the Alliance is pretty much over. For political reasons, the events on Balance Point will be kept as secret as possible. But there will be questions. Colonies don't just wink out of existence, and someone's going to have to explain all the bodies. They'll have to sacrifice someone to appease the public, and as soon as Intelligence loses its interest in you, you are going to be that sacrifice.

"However, I find that your knowledge makes you too valuable to rot in a prison cell for the rest of your life. And frankly, should the Reapers truly be on our doorstep, then we'll need every single bit of knowledge we can scrape together. That's why I want you to work for me."

"Work for you, sir?"

"Being an admiral has its perks, you see. Not many, but they're there. As Councilor Udina's advisor, I can pull some strings to get you out of here. I'll reassign you to my staff and make all the data we have on the Reapers available to you. And I can get you in touch with other people who also take this threat seriously."

Akiban pondered that for a long moment. She didn't like being removed from the field, but somehow she had known that her career as a platoon leader was at an end the moment she ordered accelerator fire into a crowd of colonists. "What will I be doing?"

"Your role would be advisory at first," Anderson admitted and raised a hand as if to preempt a protest. "I know what you're thinking. I was pulled from the front lines not too long ago, myself. It's not a pleasant feeling for a Marine. But right now it's the only alternative you have to becoming a victim of Alliance politics. And in the end, if the Reapers are what they claim, then the whole galaxy might turn into one massive front line soon enough."

"A way out, indeed," Akiban said. "Very well, sir. I accept."

Anderson left soon after, seeing that Akiban was tired, but promised to send someone for her soon. Having nothing else to do and feeling weariness creeping up on her, she returned to bed. As she lay there on her back, staring at the ceiling with her hands folded behind her head, she thought about what she had learned.

From what little she knew about the Protheans, she understood that their technology had been superior to that of the Citadel races by a wide margin. If they had truly been wiped out by the Reapers fifty thousand years ago, then what hope of victory did the present galactic civilization have? Her throat tightened at the thought of witnessing humanity and the other races suffering the same fate as the Protheans had.

Yet what truly gave her unrest was the reason for such an atrocious act of genocide. She recalled the device rambling something about being beyond her comprehension, but if history had taught humanity anything, she thought, then it was that explanations along those lines often coincided with blind faith in doctrine, madness, or both. There was simply no justification for wiping out galactic civilization, especially if said civilization was technologically inferior to one's own.

Akiban's thoughts wandered off at that, and suddenly she recalled herself standing at the top of the stairs in front of the Administration Building in Balance Point, yelling something about accelerator fire at a target in the middle of civilians. The realization flashed into her mind, and she struggled to hold on to it. It was fear. It was plain fear of the loss of control, fear of one's own helplessness. Memories began flooding in, and her mind replayed these past events without mercy. There was Parrin IV and its slaughtered colonists; and there was Kela lying in a pool of her own blood; and there was David Foster with a bullet in his brain. Akiban realized that she had chosen violence in each of these instances because she had been afraid of losing control of the situation. And control was something she had struggled for desperately.

She took a deep breath and rubbed her eyes. Maybe the Reapers were afraid, or, since they were machines, whoever had created them had been afraid. Perhaps they were a desperate attempt to deal with a situation for which their creators lacked a proper solution, like mass accelerators, laser scalpels, or pistols. Akiban rolled to her side and shoved her right hand under the pillow, deciding that eradicating any party one cannot control was a stupid, outright primitive solution. Had she acted like that, no one would have survived Parrin IV. She knew that she had never been able to control Varelius, the quarians, or Rynes and her Cerberus friends, but by cooperating with them and influencing their potential and resources to work toward her goal, she had finally succeeded in destroying the device.

And ultimately, the device had been wrong, Akiban concluded. It wasn't humanity's drive or resilience that made it in any way better than the other races, even though she had to admit that there was massive potential in those traits. No, the true power of the galactic community lay in cooperation. If each individual was allowed to unfold its strengths toward a common goal, then the results tended to exceed those of desperate acts of violence.

**Appendix I: Platoon Roster**

7th Frontier Division, 10th Infantry Regiment, 24th Reconnaissance Battalion, 1st Reconnaissance Company, 2nd Scout Platoon

**Command**

Second Lieutenant Sarah Akiban (Platoon Leader) [C5]

Operations Chief Daisuke Nakata (Platoon Non-com) [D5]

**1****st**** Squad (Assault)**

GCh Markus Huber (Squad Leader) [C5]

**Fire Team Alpha**

Cpl Daniela Miller (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PFC Kara Miles (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

PFC Marina Alvarez (Rifleman) [C4]

PFC Richard Vinne (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

**Fire Team Bravo**

Cpl Mike Arden (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PFC Saskia Connor (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PFC Jennifer Gilmore (Rifleman, Driver One) [C5]

PFC Nicholas McKenzie (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

**2****nd**** Squad (Assault)**

GCh Luc Morand (Squad Leader) [C5]

**Fire Team Charlie**

Cpl Rick Anderson (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PFC Marek Alesz (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

PFC Linda O'Reilly (Rifleman, Driver Two) [C5]

PFC Thomas Varel (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

**Fire Team Delta**

Cpl Maria Jenkins (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PFC Patrick Rüthemann (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PFC Mario Buerge (Rifleman) [C4]

PFC Lynne McCoy (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

**3****rd**** Squad (Heavy Weapons)**

GCh John Hamann (Squad Leader) [C5]

**Fire Team Echo**

Cpl Pavel Wysocki (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PFC Darek Sokolov (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PSC Alan Matarin (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PFC Flavio Matelli (Rifleman, Driver Three) [C5]

**Fire Team Foxtrot**

Cpl Raine Patricks (Fire Team Leader) [C5]

PSC Catherine Omar (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PFC John Olson (Heavy Weapons) [C5]

PFC Christian Senega (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

**4****th**** Squad (Long Range)**

GCh Ledia Rodriguez (Squad Leader) [C5]

**Pair Uno**

PFC António Costa (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

PSC Karren Aliela (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

**Pair Due**

PFC Jason Mandella (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

PFC Aaron Tarit (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

**Pair Tre**

PFC Marianne Veron (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

PSC Michael Eck (Adv. Marksman) [C5]

**Pair Quattro**

PFC Johnny Aires (Rifleman, Medic) [C5]

PFC Xaine Juera (Rifleman, Driver Four) [C5]

Military Vocational Codes (not canon): C: Special task units operating within the frame of regular forces.

D: Engineering Corps


End file.
